Researchers caught a lake sturgeon in New York’s Cayuga Lake in October. The 154-pound, 6-foot-5-inch fish, obtained by New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) biologists conducting a population survey, was nearly twice the size of the largest sturgeon previously caught in Cayuga.
It was only 5 pounds lighter than a sturgeon thought to be the largest ever found in New York. That fish, caught last year by researchers from Oneida Lake, weighed 159.4 pounds and was estimated to be 26 years old.
Lake sturgeon is New York’s largest freshwater fish, but is off limits to recreational anglers. Nearly extinct in the late 1800s due to overfishing, dams and pollution, the endangered species is protected in the Empire State, where it is the subject of a restoration effort that began in 1992.
Since then, New York has stocked 300,000 sturgeon in waterways. where they once thrived, including the Oneida, Cayuga, and selected tributaries of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.
Many of these hatchery-raised fish carry integrated passive transponder (PIT) tags that help scientists monitor sturgeon movement and growth. Researchers also tag any wild lake sturgeon they catch during their net surveys, as they did with the recently caught 6-foot, 5-inch one.
“Acoustic tags are scanned by receivers located throughout the lake and collected as fish swim past, providing an understanding of where fish are moving around the lake,” said Emily Zollweg-Horan, NYDEC senior aquatic biologist in the Syracuse Post Standard.
He says the 66-square-mile Cayuga Lake has 42 sturgeon tagged out of an estimated population of 400, which is considered a major step toward recovery. The NYDEC is expected to release a full progress report next year.
An obstacle to the recovery of the species is its slow rate of maturation. Males reach sexual maturity between 8 and 19 years, and females between 14 and 23 years. That said, the lake sturgeon is also one of the longest-lived freshwater fish, with females known to live for over 80 years.
New York fishing regulations prohibit the intentional targeting of lake sturgeon, and any accidentally hooked by recreational anglers must be released immediately. Although considered threatened or endangered in nearly every U.S. state where they are found, lake sturgeon are subject to limited recreational fishing in some states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The IGFA world catch record is a 168-pound lake sturgeon caught in Georgian Bay, Ontario, in May 1982.