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Sturgeon


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On Thursday we got 3... 2 were in the low 50's and one was a 60 incher.The water is starting to warm up a little this should help.

BB1

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water clarity, not so much. but usually, it's the stuff that comes with the muddy water that messes stuff up. usually the muddy water means debris & high, fast-flowing water, which can really mess stuff up.

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We were up there last year when the water was really running and it was very muddy. We caught alot of sturgeon but also needed 12-16 oz of weight to stay on the bottom and every ten minutes had to clear your line.

Iceman

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Im going to be up there April 20-22 to try and catch a sturgeon for the first time. Do you guys think I will still be able to catch some or with the spring the way it has been should I be coming up earlier.

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Sturgeon should be rough fish.

i posted this in another thread, but HOW MANY WALLEYE EGGS do these eat?

seriously.

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So sturgeon should be reclassified as rough fish, because they eat walleye eggs? That seems like a pretty narrow point of view.

Would the walleye population be in better shape if there were no sturgeon? How much better does the walleye population have to be before you are happy?

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Maybe people at cocktail parties should be designated as rough fish. They eat a lot of sturgeon eggs.

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Around or less than 10% of the walleyes from LOTW spawn in the rainy river. Easy to see why theres so few walleyes up there with all the sturgeon eating ALL of the 'eye eggs.

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I'm not sure he is just looking for a reaction. That opinion is common here. I like to think back to the public input meetings when the sturgeon regulation changes were proposed. One resoter wanted to get rid of the sturgeon because, "...no ever made a dollar off of them". Quite the visionary.

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no, im being real. If you have a better answer for me, ill take it.

now the 10% of walleye population into the mouth seems good on paper, but who knows.

It just seems like they gorge on the egg's to me.

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lakebison, i dont know if it's ignorance or misinformation, but you're spouting malarky. do some research before you go trolling for angry posts. my cousin spent 5 years studying sturgeon. i asked him about this & he flat-out laughed. according to his study, 91% of a sturgeon's diet is invertabrates & crustaceans. 8% is fish. less than .5% of a sturgeon's diet consists of fish eggs. and it's not like they only go after eye eggs. they also eat sucker eggs, which are also dirty eye egg eaters & prolly eat waaaaay more eye eggs than sturgeon ever will. to top it off, if you look at any system that has sturgeon (lotw, rainy, namaken, st. louis, st. croix, etc etc) they have an extremely healthy walleye population. & the fact that they were here waaay before we were here (& in alot bigger #s) & the eye population was just fine then, i'm pretty sure they'll be just fine.

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Just curious does anyone know if they eat zebra mussels? Could it be a good solution for lakes like Mille Lacs?

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It just seems like they gorge on the egg's to me.

Based on what info?

I assume from the countless hours you spent in scuba gear in the Rainy studying the eating habits of a Sturgeon?

sheesh!

God only knows that LOW could most likely be a premiere walleye lake if we only got rid of the sturgeon...

another sheesh!

I guess this means 'Good Bye to Red Lake's walleyes'... they just dumped a pile of them in there... oh wait, when man came to the shores of the lake in pre-dam days the lake was overflowing with walleye AND sturgeon... funny how all those egg sucking sturgeon hadn't eliminated the walleye... it took man to do that!

Good Luck!

Ken

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Just curious does anyone know if they eat zebra mussels? Could it be a good solution for lakes like Mille Lacs?

They do eat them, but not enough to make a difference.

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lakebison, i dont know if it's ignorance or misinformation, but you're spouting malarky. do some research before you go trolling for angry posts. my cousin spent 5 years studying sturgeon. i asked him about this & he flat-out laughed. according to his study, 91% of a sturgeon's diet is invertabrates & crustaceans. 8% is fish. less than .5% of a sturgeon's diet consists of fish eggs...

You beat me to it, Fishuhalik. Not only do Sturgeon eat far fewer eggs than believed by many (virtually none, truth be told), but suckers (since we are defending fish) have a near identical diet to sturgeon and feed primarily on aquatic insects and crustaceans. They aren't really the egg eating destroyers they are pegged as being, either. Fish gorge in the river on their way to spawn, and by the time they reach the end of the road (whatever part of whatever creek they can't go further in) they are as far from hungry as fish get and are there only to lay eggs and leave, generally without eating until they are back in the river systems. This is true of pike, walleyes, suckers, sturgeon, and so on...I think it's safe to say those eggs are pretty well left alone by all species of fish.

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Ditto these guys - fish eggs aren't a significant part of sucker or sturgeon diets (or many other fish). Dams silting in spawning gravel and cutting off migration is a much bigger concern.

Sturgeon do eat Zebs but they aren't heavy duty mollusk eaters like River Redhorse and Freshwater Drum. Note that even rivers overflowing with Drum still have a Zebra Mussel problem so they (apparently) are quite fast reproducers

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ok ok , ill do some more research... but the following quote means we better catch more walleyes!

Walleyes probably eat more walleyes than any other fish.
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once you hook onto a sturgeon that breaches and you fight it for hours how can't you be hooked on such an amazing species of fish right here in MN? Get Real. its how the world goes round, no reason to worry about walleye numbers in this fishery till it goes down due to the great furry chinned monsters.

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Lakesbison has been banned from several foumns, don't listen to him. I'm sure it won't be long until he's not welcome here either.

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Well apparently Lakesbison hasn't actually fish for walleyes on the Lake of the Woods or Rainy. Because the last several years I have not saw a decrease in walleye fishing it actually is better every year. Sturgeon continue to grow as well. All around it is pretty much the best place in the mid west for multi species fishing. If the crappies would travel south from Canada it bit more it would have everything. Besides mother nature will take care of her self she always does. If you don't have other species of fish in a later it would be concerning an healthy lake should support several varieties of fish. But I suspect he got the rise out of people he was looking for. Enough said.

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  • Your Responses - Share & Have Fun :)

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