I was thinking about the upcoming sturgeon season on the Rainy River which can’t come fast enough and got to thinking when is the best time to go, when do they migrate up the river, what factors trigger them to migrate.
I had always heard that getting up there as close to ice out was best. Follow the ice. Our group has almost always gone up the day the walleye season ends so some years it’s right as the ice is going out like 2013 & 2014 or we it’s been out for a few weeks like 2011 & 2012.
Various factors have impacted results like strength of current and wind so it’s hard to know did we hit it just right or miss it. I was looking to see if there were any articles and stumbled across the one I’ve attached.
It’s a study done back in 88-90 to test this very issue. For those that don’t want to take the time to read all of it, they used radio transmitters to track the movements of 20 or so sturgeon over a three year period checking multiple times a week and monitoring current and water temp as well. It goes on to say that it seems there are two types of sturgeon. A river population and a lake population. The lake population only enter the river to spawn and the river population only leave the river in late spring until mid summer and return for the rest of the year. They go onto say that the fish that were moving to spawn were triggered when water temps hit 53 degrees F accompanied by increased flow which would make sense from the other rivers opening up and melting runoff etc…They also mentioned that locals have noticed a small spawning run earlier in spring a much larger one later in spring. They hypothesized that it was the river population that spawns first since the river is free of ice sooner and warms up quicker and the lake population which is larger is the second run which warms up later in the spring and is free of ice last.
Anyway, small sample size but interesting non the less and makes me wonder if fishing later into early May is the way to go.
On a different note, I read an article recently that sturgeon are being stalked into Red Lake. Didn’t know that but I suppose they are stocking sturgeon in a lot of places now based on the success of the Rainy and St. Croix rivers.
April can’t come soon enough.
