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By Tom Dickson

7Minnesota Volunteer: May-June 1991

Monstrous in size but not disposition, the lake sturgeon is our biggest yet perhaps least understood freshwater fish.

Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens)

For its state fish, Minnesota should consider replacing the walleye with the lake sturgeon. Though a worthy sport fish, the walleye is puny and insignificant compared with the sturgeon, a fish sometimes larger than the angler who catches it. And no king ever ate walleye eggs, and no wine was ever clarified from walleye bladder, as has been the case with sturgeon. What makes the sturgeon even more deserving of honor: It still exists, despite having been hooked, snagged, shot, and burned.

King of Fishes. The story of lake sturgeon and the residents of what is now called Minnesota goes back thousands of years, to when people first fished Lake Superior, Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, and other big waters where sturgeon swam. Forest tribes such as the Ojibwe revered the huge fish, which they called nah ma, meaning "king of fishes." Just as the prairie tribes depended on bison for a variety of food and materials, the northern peoples pursued the lake sturgeon for its meat, skin, oil, and waterproofing, the latter of which was derived from a fluid in the fish's bladder. In the spring women waded the shallows of big lakes to net spawning fish that had moved close to shore. In the winter men speared sturgeon, dangling lifelike perch decoys to lure the curious fish close to holes cut in the ice.

Sturgeon were equally prized on the other side of the world, but were reserved for royalty. In Britain, kings prohibited peasants from capturing the huge fish under penalty of death. "The king shall have the wreck of the seas throughout the realm, whales and great sturgeons,'' reads a decree from 14th century monarch Edward II. Caviar, the salted roe of sturgeon, was more prized than the fish itself. Prepared in Russia during the Middle Ages, caviar was introduced to other European countries in the 16th century and soon became the exclusive fare of the aristocracy.

Perhaps because they were descendants of lower classes, the early immigrants shunned the sturgeon of North America, favoring other species. Commercial anglers combing northern lakes for walleye and whitefish actually reviled sturgeon for blundering into their nets and tearing them apart. In the early 19th century, so many entangled sturgeon were slaughtered and left to rot that the corpses themselves became a nuisance. Ships hauled the decomposing bodies to other waters. Sturgeon were tossed on land, doused with kerosene, and set aflame. Others were piled on the decks of steamships like cordwood and used to fire the boilers.

Commercial anglers saw the big fish in a new light after 1855, when a caviar-producing plant was built in Sandusky, Ohio, by entrepreneurs who realized that lake sturgeon were similar to Russian beluga sturgeon, the roe of which was made into expensive caviar. Almost overnight, fishing boat captains headed to known sturgeon haunts, many no doubt kicking themselves for stoking their ships with sturgeon "logs" a few years earlier.

Unfortunately for sturgeon, being prized was no better than being despised. In the 1880s anglers netted more than 10 million tons of sturgeon from the Great Lakes alone. Once shipped to the Sandusky plant, the female sturgeon were cut open for their eggs. Both sexes were processed for their meat, said to taste like veal, and isinglass, a gelatinous substance found in the bladder and used to clarify beer and wine, to cement pottery, and to set jellies. Sturgeon skins were tanned as fine-grade leather and made into handbags, shoes, and belts sold on the East Coast and in Europe.

Although the average sturgeon netted in those days weighed 20 to 30 pounds, fish of 100 pounds and more were not uncommon. "The largest sturgeon ever caught in Lake of the Woods--as far as anyone here knows--was brought in on the Isabel the first part of last week," reported the Warroad Plain Dealer in the late 1880s. "It weighed 276 pounds and measured about 8 feet." And the Fond du Lac Journal of Wisconsin reported the capture of a 9-foot 297-pounder in the spring of 1881. The heaviest lake sturgeon ever substantiated was caught by commercial fishermen in Batchawana Bay in eastern Lake Superior. The fish weighed 310 pounds.

Partly because of the efficacy of commercial fishermen, the boom ended before it began. By 1895 the annual Lake Erie harvest had dropped to 1 million pounds, one-fifth that of 10 years earlier. Lake of the Woods, once described as "the greatest sturgeon water in the world," saw its catch decline by 90 percent from 1893 to 1900. Reports of monstrous fish were less and less frequent; the average size of fish caught dwindled. By 1908 Stephen Forbes and Robert Richardson were writing in Fishes of Illinois that the Mississippi catch had become negligible: "Fishermen at Alton now see but five or six sturgeon in a year that weigh over 10 pounds."

Dams, Erosion, and Pollution. Even though commercial fishing for sturgeon was banned in most U.S. waters in the first half of the 1900s, the fish continued to decline in number. Dams built during the early 20th century prevented the relatively few remaining sturgeon from swimming up streams to spawning riffles. Clear cutting, wetland drainage, and. other land misuse increased erosion, silting in the gravel and. rock to which the sturgeon eggs stick as they incubate. Channels and levies built to aid river transportation wiped out countless spawning and feeding areas. Sewage and chemicals from growing cities, factories and farms killed the mollusks sturgeons eat.

Perhaps what hurt the sturgeon most was its limited reproduction. The sturgeon is a long-lived fish---specimens more than 100 years old have been recorded---and cannot spawn until about age 20. After that, they reproduce only every four or five years. Once decimated, a sturgeon population may take decades to recover, even if the water is clean and fishing is prohibited.

Some Monsters. The lake sturgeon today is listed as rare, endangered, or of special concern in most states in its original range, which extended from Alabama and Arkansas north to Lake Erie and west to Montana. Despite declines in Minnesota's population, our state still has enough to allow a fishing season. In Minnesota, lake sturgeon swim in the Mississippi River as far north as the St. Anthony Falls dam in Minneapolis, the St. Croix and its tributaries, the Red River along the Minnesota-North Dakota border, and Lake Superior. The state's largest population is in Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, and Rainy River and its tributaries. Minnesota also has a protected population of the shovelnose sturgeon, a smaller cousin of the lake sturgeon, found primarily in the Minnesota River.

Minnesota's sturgeon season is open throughout the year except for six weeks from mid-May to the end of June, when the fish spawn. The Department of Natural Resources lets anglers have one fish in possession, but catching even one is a challenge. A study of one of Wisconsin's best sturgeon waters showed that anglers caught an average of only one sturgeon for every 250 hours of fishing.

Even though most sturgeon caught these days weigh only 15 to 20 pounds, some monsters still swim in Minnesota waters. In 1986, while fishing the Kettle River, a tributary of the St. Croix, James DeOtis landed a sturgeon weighing 92.3 pounds---the world all-tackle record. DeOtis, of Maple Grove, swears he's seen fish far bigger than his world-record catch leap from the water at his secret fishing hole. "I'm positive there's one over 200 pounds in the St. Croix," he says.

Swimming With Sturgeon. Sturgeon are monstrous in size but not disposition. These placid creatures have been known to swim among the legs of humans wading in the shallows. Lacking teeth, the lake sturgeon eats primarily nymphs and other small aquatic animals it vacuums up from lake and river bottoms with a long, tubelike mouth. Though it looks eerily like a shark with its bullet-shaped head, scaleless skin, and long tail, the sturgeon is as harmless as a wet log.

Dave Friedl, area fisheries manager at International Falls, is living proof of the sturgeon's gentle nature. In the spring of 1990, he and several DNR fisheries biologists donned scuba gear and swam among spawning sturgeon in riffles of the Little Fork River. Friedl said the fish, some of them 6 feet long, appeared undisturbed by the biologists, who noted spawning areas and collected eggs the fish had released. "You could swim right up and put your arm around them," Friedl says. "They weren't spooked at all. In fact, they seemed to almost enjoy it."

Tracking Tagged Fish. The Little Fork study was part of the DNR's sturgeon recovery program, aimed at restoring sturgeon populations. The program's most notable success has been a joint project with the Wisconsin DNR on the St. Louis River, where 36,000 sturgeon fingerlings (8 to 10 inches) raised in the St. Paul hatchery have been stocked over the past seven years. Fisheries researchers fit the small fish with tiny wire tags so they can be identified later. Researchers say most of the fish netted in the fall are 10 to 14 inches long, indicating they had been stocked the previous year and are growing well.

The DNR is also working with Ontario fisheries biologists to find out where Lake of the Woods sturgeon swim. Using tracking equipment, the biologists followed 18 transmitter-tagged fish for two years. They've discovered that some live most of their lives in the tributaries of Lake of the Woods, and others live almost entirely in the lake. Friedl says the information from these and other experiments is just some of the data fisheries biologists need to better understand the sturgeon and decide how best to protect it. "The sturgeon population in Lake of the Woods seems to be strong, but even there we don't have the population statistics we need to manage it properly," he says.

DeOtis, who spends several weeks each year fishing for sturgeon, thinks the DNR should use a slot limit to protect medium-sized fish. "It would also help if we used the Wisconsin system, where you have to tag and register your sturgeon like a deer," he says. That would cut down on the poaching. "Where we collected eggs last spring, there were fresh .22 casings all over the shore," Friedl says.

Minnesota's DNR is one of only a few conservation agencies in the country working to restore the lake sturgeon. Although reintroductions like that on the St. Louis River won't provide fish of legal fishing size for perhaps another 10 years, the program is important to everyone who appreciates the value of native and unique fish species. Maybe we will never make the lake sturgeon our state fish, but all Minnesotans can take pride in knowing that our gentle giant is again finding a home in waters where it once reigned as the king of fishes.

Tom Dickson, staff writer the DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife, is a frequent contributor to the Volunteer. He and Rob Buffler wrote Fishing for Buffalo: A Guide to the Pursuit, Lore, and Cuisine of Buffalo, Carp, Mooneye, Gar, and other "Rough" Fish.

Photo Caption

The sturgeon's name is derived from a Germanic root meaning "to stir" or "to poke around." The fish uses its barbels to detect food, which it sucks up with its tubelike mouth.