Was out on River 5/16, and happened to be looking in the right direction several times to see sturgeon completely clearing the water.
Even saw one that had to be 36-48″.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen that!
Fished all over and caught a few walleye right away in the AM down from Afton. Fished all over and saw lots of fish caught, but no more bites for us….
Lake Sturgeon jump frequently. In fact just a couple years ago a youngster in FL was hit by a Green Sturgeon. There’s 27 flavors of sturgeon world wide.
There was an article about FL granting money to the U of FL to study why they jump. The study had a couple suggestions but the bottom line was “because they can”.
Personally (no scientific evidence supporting this that I’m aware of) but since they normally feed off the bottom, their gills could get clogged up with sediment and jumping is a good way of back flushing the gills.
If you ever get out sturgeon fishing and have one jump on the end of your line, there’s a common saying that comes out everyone’s mouth…. “Holy SH*T!” Guaranteed.
When we are asked why sturgeon jump our general reply is “because they want to” similar to the one BK proposed.
During a national meeting of the American Fisheries Society a few years back I attended a presentation on why sturgeon jump that may be related to the University of Florida study BK mentioned.
They built custom tags for sturgeon (i can’t remember the species off hand) using the accelerometer and tilt sensors from smart phones. When attached to the dorsal fin in front of the tail the researchers were able to record the orientation (head up vs head down) of the fish, and the frequency and intensity of tail beats. As I recall their results at the time indicated that at least one of the reasons sturgeon jump may be to gulp air.
Many species of fish have swim bladders, and if you have caught many sturgeon you will be familiar with their “burping” bubbles as their are brought to the surface. This is at least partially because as the fish comes to the surface the pressure on its body is reduced and the gasses in the swim bladder expand. Sturgeon can “burp” because they have a direct connection between their gas bladder and their mouth. (The lack of this type of connection is what causes mortality problems for species like Walleye and Perch pulled from deep water when they can’t quickly purge the excess gas).
In order to maintain neutral buoyancy at deeper depths fish must have more gas in these bladders (to compensate for the compression that occurs at depth). Fish can slowly fill these bladders by transferring gasses out of their blood stream over time, but fish with a direct connection can also gulp air at the surface potentially filling the gas bladder more quickly, but leaving them to more than neutrally buoyant in the lower pressures near the surface.
Back to the study…
As I recall the researchers found that after jumping the sturgeon often swam head down with tail beats that were measured by the accelerometer as stronger than those they were using before the jump. Their interpretation at the time was that the sturgeon had gulped air during the jump and was now trying to force its more buoyant body to a depth where the water pressure would shrink the gas to an appropriate volume to provide buoyancy. Think of a kid trying to swim to the bottom of a pool with an inflated football.
To date it is the best “evidence supported” theory I have seen, but it is always possible that they are trying to knock of lamprey, clean, their gills, or just want to take a look at that guy who keeps chucking 4 oz sinkers into their living room!
Either way good luck sturgeon fishing this year and feel free to send any questions our way.
Nick
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