The annual spearing of lake sturgeon is underway in the Lake Winnebago system near Oshkosh. This year, anglers are dealing with thin ice and the perception that this could be the last year of spearing.
However, a species preservation group says it does not expect the Biden Administration to sunset the local sturgeon harvest.
The chance to buy a license, sit or stand on the ice of Lake Winnebago or three connected lakes, and use a spear to kill a large fish like the sturgeon usually draws thousands of anglers. This year, due to iffy ice conditions, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource says only several hundred people have been spearing for each of the first three days of what could be a 16-day season.
As of Tuesday morning, only 156 sturgeon had been harvested.
So, that seems to make success even sweeter.
“Thirty-nine and six tenths in weight,” said DNR retiree and now-volunteer Tom Burzynski as he helped weigh and measure the first sturgeon brought in Saturday to a popular registration station south of Oshkosh, outside the bar and restaurant Wendt’s on the Lake.
The happy spearer of the 58-inch fish was Kewaskum resident Jeff Paulus. He was so elated after eight years of unsuccessful attempts that he made a deer-hunting comparison.
“Well, it’s like shooting your first big buck. I mean, you start shaking. You get the shakes, like everybody gets it on their first one, I’m sure,” Paulus told news reporters.
Most spearers are men. But women succeed, too. Jacquelynne Warner of Fond du Lac also brought in her first sturgeon after more than five years of trying.
“Great, so excited. I’m over the moon on this one. There’s such a strong tradition in our area of sturgeon spearing, and that this could be the very last year we get to do it, it means a lot to bring it home this year,” Warner tells WUWM.
By “very last year,” Warner is referring to the idea— stoked by some Wisconsin politicians — that when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service completes a court-ordered review of lake sturgeon populations this summer, the agency will propose protections for the sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act.
One of the lawmakers promoting that concern is U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Sheboygan County ). He says an Arizona-based national conservation group, the Center for Biological Diversity, is among those petitioning for the federal review.
“Well, obviously, they’ve had some wins in the past. And people I’ve talked to are concerned that, well, they (sturgeon) may or may not be endangered; some people may want to put their thumb on the scale of this decision because it could be used to tear down more dams in the area,” Grothman tells WUWM.
But the prospect of removing dams so that sturgeon could have an easier time spawning is not what Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity emphasizes. He says the U.S. population of the ancient fish, which live primarily in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi River Basin, has dropped 99% over the last century because of overfishing, dams and pollution. Miller says that the decline merits the federal government finally ruling on lake sturgeon.
But he says the feds could still let anglers from the Lake Winnebago area off the hook and issue an exemption for those sturgeon.
“They can exempt any activity such as state fishing programs that they find are consistent with recovery of species. If it’s well-managed like I think Lake Winnebago seems to be, I think that exemption is going to be pretty easy to get,” Miller says.
Miller says anglers might want to be more concerned about whether this year’s thin ice is due to normal weather variation or the result of climate change, which would have a long-term effect on ice fishing.
The lack of ice has given James Gishkowsky second thoughts about spearing this year.
“A fish isn’t worth being on the bottom of the ice,” Gishkowsky says as he sits in a pickup truck Saturday outside Wendt’s.
And Gishkowsky is no novice angler. Last year, he speared a sturgeon that was 177 pounds and nearly seven feet long.
