Pool 4 Sturgeon Tagging Rodeo for MN DNR tagging- 8/25

Next Pool 4 Sturgeon Rodeo on Pool 4 is set for Friday, August 25th.

In partnership with the MN DNR, we are again looking for as many sturgeon fishermen we can round up to catch and turn them over to the DNR for tagging.

Our last session had about 26 boats attend with 26 Lake Sturgeon caught and tagged. Three were tagged with acoustic transmitters to aid in actual tracking of Lake Sturgeon.

More details coming but I wanted to get the date out there.

The DNR tagging starts at 3 pm and lasts until dusk. Come anytime!

Roger. Send it ttt when the date approaches. I’ll likely see if I can help

Thanks Andy…and I sure will!

If one were to head down to start Prefishing for the tagging event, where would one start looking for fish?

Start at the dam and move down stream or start at the y and move up towards the dam. Sounds silly, but it’s not. Sometimes there are good bites between the wing dams and other times on the WI side.

At one time I thought sand was my friend fishing for sturg there. Since that time I’ve caught them over silt, clams, in deep and shallow water.

Sand and a crawler most always gives up a shovelnose though.

thanks Brian, you going to be around tomorrow afternoon at all?

I’ll be down about 3pm. Generally heading out with the FW by 4 ’cause she has her Friday night shoes on.

This Friday folks!

I’ll be there with a full boat.
Free launch with crawlers again?

Is there a phone number to hail the DNR boat?

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

I’ll be there with a full boat.
Free launch with crawlers again?

Is there a phone number to hail the DNR boat?

I haven’t heard about the launch or crawlers. This will need to come from the resort.

The DNR will monitor Ch 68 on the marine band and be watching for the red flags or any other way you would like to flag them down.

We need to stay above the Y because we are in a catch and release area. We can’t put the fish in our live wells or reduce them to possession in any other way. Holding them in a net in the water until the transport boat arrives is acceptable.

That’s a sadly small area, especially in rising flow.

I like the big hole below the Y.

3/4s of a mile. You might be surprised at how many large fish are caught around the 3rd wing dam in the center of the river.

FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:

I like the big hole below the Y.

I like the head of the lake…but there needs to be a way to let them know you have a fish. Got flares?

Brian Klawitter wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>FishBlood&RiverMud wrote:</div>
I like the big hole below the Y.

I like the head of the lake…but there needs to be a way to let them know you have a fish. Got flares?
[/quote
No flare, but I did order a marine radio for Friday

Check with Nick Andy, it’s their call.

Hey guys,

As Brian said we will have flags for folks to use to attract our attention. I will try and leave some in a bucket by the Evert’s baitshop, and we will have some in our transfer and surgery boats to distribute. We will be asking anglers to fish from the Y up to the dam on the dam side again during this event. To Andy’s question about location we will certainly entertain the idea of moving the event to other locations in the future. In fact we would very much like to hear about anglers successfully targeting Lake Sturgeon outside the tailwater areas, but in this case we are seeking to tag fish that come from the tailwaters specifically.

We are targeting the tailwater fish in an attempt to answer a number of questions about Lake Sturgeon populations and movements in the river.

1) Are the Lake Sturgeon in the tailwater area functioning as a separate population from the rest of the pool?

Most of our tagging has occurred near the tailwater, but so have most of our recaptures. Are these fish just staying there, or do they just get recaptured there because that is where the anglers target them? Our acoustic tags we hope to implant have a 10 year battery life and will communicate with receivers we have spread over the Upper Mississippi system to determine if these fish are staying in the tailwaters or are moving around like other fish and just happen to get recaptured while going through a tailwater area.

2) Are the tailwaters acting as a nursery area for the Lake Sturgeon population?

Our first event captured almost exclusively small fish. We collected aging structures from all but the three individuals we implanted acoustic tags into, and while we have not aged them yet similar sized fish from previous sampling in the tailwaters in 2007-2008 were primarily 3-7 years old. We have received a number of tag returns over the past several years where fish were tagged in the LD3 tailwaters between 20-30 inches in length and then recaptured 7-10 years later in distant areas of the system at lengths of >45 inches when they might be considered mature if they ware male. The most recent example was a fish tagged on Aug 8, 2007 below LD3 at 23.2 inches in length and recaptured below the dam on the Black River in Black River Falls, WI on Aug 16, 2017 at a reported 50 inches in length. We have also had fish tagged at a smaller size in the LD3 tailwater show up below the dam on the Minnesota River in Granite Falls, MN. These disbursements may just be coincidental or a result of a constantly mixing population, but the smaller fish that were implanted with acoustic transmitters in the tailwater in June will hopefully provide us with that information over the next ten years. If they stay in the tailwater area for several years and then suddenly leave and start to travel the system it will provide fairly strong evidence for use of the tailwaters as nursery habitat.

We look forward to seeing folks at the event this Friday. Feel free to stop and say hi to us in the surgery boat, (20′ Lake Assault) that will likely be pulled up on shore somewhere to give us a more stable platform, when you arrive.

If you have any other questions about the Lake Sturgeon work we do on the river, or any other questions about fisheries on Pool 4/Lake Pepin feel free to contact me.

Thanks again for all your help,

Nick Schlesser

Sounds good, I’ll be down there. Should be two of us in my old olive green closed bow 14’er. Been quite a while since I’ve fished p4 so it should be fun. I’ll be interested to see what you guys find over time – I will say I’ve ran into a lot of young Lake Sturgeon in other tailwaters at times (they were everywhere last time I was at Whitman dam), but that’s just anecdotal and most of my Sturgeon fishing is in Lake St Croix.

Nick, I will be getting the boat wet about 3pm.
Stop in at my camper around 2 or later, the FW is aware to give you the handheld (ch 68 worked well last time).

Thanks for that info as well. I know there’s a lot of us that would like to see the info you’re collecting from the transmitters at some point.

See ya all Friday!

See the attached file for a bit more information on what we are hoping to do on Friday. The link and QR code at the end of the document will also take you to a length girth weight estimating formula developed by the MN DNR using the Rainy River population by Baudette. The weights should be fairly accurate from this document, but the age at length data is likely not as accurate for our southern populations. We will be using some of the aging structures we can hopefully collect from fish on Friday to try and improve a length at age estimate for our Mississippi River Lake Sturgeon.

Thanks,

Nick

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Thanks MNDNR.
Here’s Javin’s 1st sturgeon. 55″.

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Nice fish Andy.

My son and I caught two small sturgeon that were both collected for tagging. I chatted with one of the MNDNR guys back at Everts after the event who said that they collected 39 sturgeon. If I recall correctly, I think 3 or 4 were shovel nose and the rest were lake sturgeon.

Thanks to MN DNR for supporting this important study. And thanks to Everts for the free use of the ramps.

Boone

thanks for the fun outing it was nice to talk to a few of you guys and all the advice you guys had for us rookies we did catch 2 but not till dnr left we had fun!!!

Boone you were there too!?

Man I missed lots of folk!

Dan Schriver hooked his PB. 55″, 41 pounds. Also caught his smallest and nice channel

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