Lake Sturgeon - Those Really Big Fish Make a Comeback!

Courtesy of Dept. of Natural Resources

Having grown up fishing on Ohio's Portage River, my heart was warmed when I learned of the restocking of sturgeon hatchlings in the Sandusky River. Eric Weimer, Ohio DNR fishery biologist, who manages the restocking, says there are no plans to restock the Portage because of its proximity to the Sandusky. However, it was one of Ohio's four rivers to once host a breeding population of lake sturgeon. He hopes, as do I, that some hatchlings make it to the Portage on their own. 

During mid-October the Ohio DNR continued its successful restocking efforts in the Cuyahoga, Maumee, and Sandusky Rivers.  Students from Clyde, Liberty Benton, and Whitmer High Schools helped release 750 baby sturgeon  into the Sandusky River. Restocking will continue for the next 25 years when the sturgeon population of Lake Erie will hopefully be reestablished.  
 

Courtesy of Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources

The largest fish in the Great  Lakes, sturgeon can grow to  9 feet and weigh more than 300 pounds, and live for 150 years. Contemporaries of the dinosaurs, sturgeon, with their shark-like tails, rows of  armored plates, and protruding mouths are an impressive site.

The return of these docile giants to Lake Erie is encouraging, but their numbers are a mere fraction of those reported by pioneers of Northwest Ohio.  Early Fremont, Ohio newspaper editor Isaac Keeler reported that sturgeon weighing 70 - 100 pounds were common in the 1850s.  It is reported  that anywhere from 330,000 to 1.1 million were believed to have lived in the waters of Lake Erie in the  early 17th century.

Native Americans revered the lake sturgeon as part of their traditional spiritual culture. But early commercial fishermen slaughtered them by the thousands.  Sturgeon were considered a nuisance because they frequently destroyed fishing nets.   Keeler reported that sturgeon were hauled from the waters, and killed like "sticking a pig." When the carcasses dried, they were piled up and set afire like "pitch-pine logs." All along the Great Lakes sturgeon were stacked like cordwood and used for fuel for the early steamships. 

Still plentiful in the 1870s, sturgeon began to find a place in the commercial market. Port Clinton, Ohio, fishermen Nassler and Detlefson opened a "fish house" and wharf there in 1874. They processed caviar, fish oil, and smoked sturgeon. According to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Great Lakes catch peaked a decade later at 8.6 million pounds. Over-fishing, pollution, and the construction of dams sent sturgeon numbers plummeting. The Ballville Dam in the Sandusky River was removed in 2018, allowing them to reach further up the tributary during spawning.

A portion of  this post (written by me)appears on Paper Trail on the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums' web site. Pictured there is an image of a 180-pound sturgeon caught on April 29, 1935, near Kelleys Island by Alfred McKillips, Albert Kugler, and Sylvester Dwelle. Fishermen claimed it was one of the largest fish ever pulled from the waters of Lake Erie. The photograph is part of the Captain Frank Hamilton Album 1.  

w