78 29½ 2/9/2019 St. Croix River Washington Darren Troseth, Jordan
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has certified a new catch-and-release state record lake sturgeon, an 80-inch fish caught by Travis Keating April 18 on the Rainy River in Lake of the Woods County.
Keating called the sturgeon “the biggest fish of my life.” He caught the fish on an annual lake sturgeon fishing trip with a group of close friends.
Sturgeon fishing on the Rainy River has become incredibly popular during the spring in Minnesota, with many anglers getting the chance to land large sturgeon. Sturgeon grow slowly and can live to be more than 150 years old.
On April 18, a bitter cold front had moved in overnight, bringing 40-plus mph wind gusts and wind chills hovering around 5 below zero. Fishing was a grind. Anchored in Four Mile Bay for nearly eight hours, the crew battled relentless wind and cold, managing seven smaller sturgeon.
By evening, instead of calling it a day, Keating decided to move toward the mouth of the river, convinced the changing conditions might trigger a late bite. After an hour of pounding through waves, it finally happened. The fishing rod doubled over, nearly touching the water. Keating described what followed as “over an hour of pure chaos.”
When the fish finally surfaced, a friend managed to hoist the massive sturgeon over the boat rail and into the boat.
“Getting the fish finally in the boat was such a surreal moment that I just couldn’t wrap my head around it,” Keating said. “Now looking back, still can’t believe I was the one to catch the fish and can’t wait to get back and try to top it!”
The fish measured 80 inches long with a 38-inch girth. While it is not recommended to weigh fish for catch-and-release records, using a chart of lake sturgeon length-girth-weight estimates would put the fish around 165 pounds. That chart is available on the DNR website (files.dnr.state.mn.us/areas/fisheries/baudette/lksweight.pdf).
Sturgeon recovery success
Catching an 80-inch sturgeon on the Rainy River is also testament to the long-term recovery of sturgeon in the Lake of the Woods-Rainy River system.
Intense commercial exploitation during the late 1800s and early 1900s decimated the once abundant sturgeon population in Lake of the Woods and Rainy River. After the decline of the commercial fishery, the sturgeon population was unable to rebound due to water pollution and degraded habitat in the Rainy River, the primary spawning area and nursery habitat for young sturgeon. But because sturgeon are extremely long-lived, enough individuals managed to survive and reproduction was sufficient to maintain a small population.
With the passage of clean water legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially the Clean Water Act of 1972, the sturgeon population started to recover as water quality and habitat conditions improved. Now reproduction is successful in most years.
Population estimates of the number of sturgeon longer than 40 inches in the Lake of the Woods-Rainy River system were made in 1990, 2004 and again in 2014. The sturgeon population grew from about 16,000 in 1990, to about 60,000 in 2004 and about 92,000 in 2014. Though a population estimate has not been conducted since 2014, ongoing lake sturgeon monitoring in the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods continues to document the success of lake sturgeon recovery.
At 80 inches, the state record fish shows that very large and old individuals occur in the population. With slow growing fish that spawn at irregular intervals, this is one indicator that the population is recovering from historic over-exploitation and water quality impacts.
Current records and guidelines for each type of state record are available at the Minnesota DNR state record fish webpage (mndnr.gov/recordfish).
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