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| 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. |
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| 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 |
