Larry Polenske

While fish swimming within a resuscitated lake sturgeon population continue to make a spring run up the Milwaukee River, the local fisheries crew has yet to see evidence of spawning.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Fisheries Biologist Aaron Schiller said, as of June 12, PIT-tag sensors in the river near Locust Avenue detected 23 sturgeon swimming upstream from Lake Michigan. Last year, 23 fish also were detected. In 2022, 24 PIT-tagged sturgeon hit the sensors. This year, five of those sturgeon made it all the way through the new Kletzsch dam fish passage farther upstream.

If the Center for Biological Diversity is successful in forcing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add sturgeon to the Endangered Species List and Wisconsin’s sturgeon are not exempted from the listing, the result could do more than just threaten a longtime spearing culture on the Winnebago system. It could hurt the local economy in the Lake Winnebago area and  anywhere sturgeon fans also fish the fall hook-and-line season.
An ESL listing would ban the harvest of sturgeon and that would disrupt the science used to estimate the sturgeon population in the Lake Winnebago system.