Oversize

[birdhunter]

Still going strong. Went out after work around Government Island. Put lines in the water at 6:20 and pulled anchor at 9:20. Boated 4 sturgeon. 3 right around 9' and one 8'. We spent more time fighting fish than we did actually fishing. Shad of course is the bait of choice, seems to help rigging it so it doesn't spin. Good luck.

[Tacklebuster]

Birdhunter,
Congrats on the peelers bro :cheers: Although the word peeler is started to get a little TABOO around here :hoboy: As soon as I get my Astoria fix for Friday and Saturday, I'm gonna soak me some shad in the same general area...

[BottomFeeder]

Tacklebuster,

I don't think it's Taboo. I just think we all need to be aware of the fact that targeting oversized sturgeon is fishing for everyones "keeper factories", including the ones that you're going to enjoy in Astoria today and Saturday. Everytime you catch two or three of those giants, you're probably taking 500-1000 future keepers out of the system.

TPM

[Nanook]

[ 11-25-2002, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: ****** ]

[Uncle Bob]

******, you're too funny!

Hey, he was fishing next to *********, so he must be telling the truth.
:grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

UB

[Fish Hunter]

STG YOU RULE!
Taboo? Not really, I personally don't look down on anyone who chooses to C&R the big girls. Great inside info. like this helps folks understand the risks on our breeders and make good choices.

[Nanook]

[ 11-25-2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: ****** ]

[Steelie Steve]

Thanks for posting the pic's ******. Great trip. :cheers:

http://www.ifish.net/uploads/294822141.gif

Hang on tight!!!!!!

Steve :grin: :grin: :grin:

[CATCH AND EAT]

STG Rule, not being a biologist or scientist I do applaud you for your research. However, how much trama do you in the field studies area cause these giants by cutting them open and taking samples???????? What mortality rate does research on these animals cause. I know you are careful and certainly I appreciate your willingness to study these babies but I think that you are way hard on the sport fishers for thier tactics.

Yes there are idiots amoung us and I can vouch for that most certainly. (I have even been once before) :wink: Hopefully most of us know that it is best to make the fight as short and sweet as possible. This is especially true with salmonoids.

Sturgeon on the otherhand are tough to kill, hurt and so on. The absorbtion of eggs may or may not be a result of angling pressure. YOUR studies assume that these breeder have been caught? Were these breeders caught by your studies groups? Do you have a copy of the study that can be accessed by I-fish members? Has there been an independant evaluation of your studies and or another independant studie groups not affilliated with yours (bias protection and authintification?)?

Not trying to bash anyone but in this day and age I AM SICK of theoretical retoric from conservation groups without hard evidence. The proof is always offered in the "could have, may have, senarios." We should not convict sport anglers on "circumstantial evidence". :shocked:

Now, you mentioned "the waters above" (bonniville?). I will plead ignorant for these waters because I know nothing about them. Enlighten me, educate me because this is certainly a different body of water. :whazzup:

Thanks in advance for listening and enlightening. :cool:

[Dirty E]

Well if you fish anywhere on the Columbia below bonneville wouldn't that be considered, "on there way to the spawning grounds?"

[STGRule]

I will find all the info you need on the morrow. (Most of it is on the web)
And yes Dirty E all the way up. Your choice. You get to choose if you need to target them on the spawning run.

[ 06-21-2002, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: STGRule ]

[birdhunter]

Interesting to see where this thread has gone since I started it last night. Went back out again tonight and got 4 more oversize out of the same spot. Hit the water at 5:30 and off by dark. Got 3 between 8' and 9' and one heartbreaking 63 incher. Measured that one several times.

I'd have to tip my hat to STGrule on the sturgeon info. That's why I don't fish for them up by Bonneville. I figure the fish up there are the one's spawning. Where we were target fish (down by Government Island), I considered far enough away to not be affecting the spawners. The Willamette sounds good if you don't want to target them, but you can't tell me no sturgeon spawn up by the falls either.

As far as sturgeon above Bonneville not doing well, I feel it is more because sturgeon are anadromous, or at least migratory, than because of sport harverst/C&R. All those fish above Bonnie can't come down to feed in the estuary or move between bays. It's a matter of less feed in the Bonneville pool, Dalles pool, etc, than you would ever have in the lower Columbia. Undoubtedly sport harvest affects them, but so do commercial and native nets. Probably more so.

I always try to get the fish in as fast as I can. I certainally don't use light gear. 80 lb mainline and 130 # dacron leader on a HEAVY rod. Finesse? I think not. Stick the drag to them, power them in, get them up, unhook them and let them go. I don't think any of the fish took us more than half an hour to land.

You don't want to fish for oversized sturgeon, fine, I honestly don't care. I don't fish for them up by Bonneville for some of the same reasons meantioned here. Just don't tell me I'm killing spawners or "1000 keepers" by catching and releasing an oversized down that low. If you've never done it before, then you certainally don't know what you're missing and words could never adequately describe it. I only get to hook into a few each year and those are some of my favorite memories. These are the kind of fish that are made for young men and fools. Fortunately I'm one of each.

[STGRule]

Okay, I'll try for a rational idea. Let's say you have 1000 (made up number) adult spawners. About half will be male. Of the about 500 females, about 1/5 to 1/3 (100 to 165) will spawn in a given year. These fish will be stacked close to the dam (Bonneville). There is about a three month spawning period (water temp about 17 C with high flows, April, May, June). An individual animal would have to caught numerous times in a short period and/or handled in a manner that caused a high level of stress hormones to interfer with the maturation cycle. In other words, if you don't fish for them on the spawning grounds, or when they are on their way up, you will have little to no impact on the spawning of those animals. By the same token, with only 100-165 potential females to spawn that year, anything that keeps that animal from spawning can't be a good thing. They have enough problems with the spawning conditions. So, figure your odds of catching a ripe female, weigh that against the potential damage, and see if you can live with those results. If like me, those odds aren't satisfactory to you, fish for them in the Willamette in the spring or wait to target them in non-spawning times. But still handle them with care.
Just my humble opinion.

[ 06-21-2002, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: STGRule ]

[NEUTRON]

Thanks for sharing your humble opinion.

[CATCH AND EAT]

From the amount of shakers out there I would say spawning is happening just fine. The problem is the growth rate and the ratio of keepers out there. That is why they are shutting it down for the summer time.

As far as absorbing their eggs, that is baloney. Have they cut one open or is this just a theory? :whazzup: I have heard this hypothesis before and I have seen no proof other than the "hypothesis" which is unsubstantiated.

Now fighting them for 3 hours like mentioned in a previous post is another thing. :mad: 15 to 40 minutes should do the trick. If it aint up by then it ain't coming up :shocked: .

It is tiring of hearing about fishing for fish on the way to their spawning grounds. Fishing on a spawing bed....thats different :sick:

Just my HUMBLE opinion. :cheers:

[Nanook]

Right on Bernie. The bigger danger is poaching the 20K or so of Caviar in them AND of course fishing with trout rods, or heavily weighted devices with treble hooks in them. :hoboy:

[ 06-21-2002, 12:54 PM: Message edited by: ****** ]

[STGRule]

C&E: Yes, "they" have cut them open. I am a "they". I've been doing it for 12 years now. On almost all oversized fish we make a small cut in the belly of the fish and look inside and take a small amount of gondal tissue to to stage. The fish is then sewn up and released.This is how we know the that there is a 3-5 year cycle for females. I have seen with my very own eyes female fish that didn't spawn and are re-absorbing the eggs. That stage of development is called attritic eggs. From artificial culture they have proved that too much stress on the fish will cause them not to spawn, no matter how much hormone is injected. Those fish also re-absorb their eggs.

And why pray tell, are you tired of hearing about fishing for them on their way to the spawning grounds? You would cause just as much damage on the way as waiting till they got there.

And while you are correct about the numbers of shakers out there, only the population BELOW Bonneville is still in pretty good shape. Above is a whole different matter.

And in actuality the growth rate below Bonneville is just fine. The reason that the "keepers" numbers are low is that people catch and keep them in that size slot. A WHOLE lot more people than ever fished for them before. Fish are vulnerable to harvest for about 5-10 years until they grow out of the slot limit. That's a long time to escape harvest.

[Nanook]

Where ever you catch them Birdhunter, they must have to tie you directly to the yardarm to keep you from going for a high speed water ski experience! :tongue: :tongue:

graemlins/hearton.gif

[NEUTRON]

birdhunter.... good post

[STGRule]

Catch and Eat: The procedure we do takes about 10 minutes and then the fish is on its way. Our recapture rate is the same for fish we do surgery on and fish we didn’t so there doesn’t appear to be much if any mortality associated with the surgery. It still is an invasive procedure and we would prefer not to do it. As a matter of fact, there are people right now working on a way to tell sex and stage of maturity from blood, urine, and mucus samples. And while they work on the procedure we are not doing any more surgeries. We have enough information from the samples that we have taken to use for now. I can’t wait till there is a non-invasive technique.

Please remember that I also am also a sport fisher and I am on your “side”. Most everybody I work with hunts and/or fishes. It is our resource too. If it seems I’m being hard on sport fishers that was not my intention. My idea is to put out as much information as possible so people can make their own decisions. Not fishing on spawning animals is my personal choice. I still sturgeon fish and may even target oversize. Just not for a few weeks in the spring.

Sturgeon are tough to kill. But not impossible to kill. The reabsorbed eggs I have seen can not be attributed to anything. By the time the fish is reabsorbing the eggs, the original stress is gone. It could have been any of a hundred things that caused it. Anything that raises the stress hormones to a high level will cause the fish to fail to spawn. The main thing that causes it is a lack of proper spawning habitat. The animal has a huge calorie load in the production of the eggs and will not release the eggs if the conditions are not right. The reabsorbing is simply re-use of the calorie load.
http://www.efw.bpa.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/websql.dir/FW/PUBLICATIONS/QueryCustom.pl?Category=R&SortOrder=DOEBPNum
Here is a link to the on-line published annual reports that we make to BPA (they pay for us to do the research as mitigation for the dams). We also publish articles in scientific journals that are independently reviewed by other scientists that have no stake in our findings. These are not generally available on-line but if you e-mail me your address I would be more than happy to send you copies of what I have.

The problems above Bonneville Dam are caused by the dams themselves. They deny passage to migrating fish , they destroyed the miles and miles of rapids that are needed for spawning and incubation of eggs, interfere with water quality and temperature, and reduce the amount of anadroumous fish species that sturgeon eat.

Birdhunter: It is highly unlikely that sturgeon spawn at Willamette Falls. There is simply not the velocity they require to stimulate spawning anymore. It may have been different a couple hundred years ago and may even have occurred in the 96 flood, but not in “normal” water flow years.

Remember that we have about the only consumptive fishery for sturgeon in the entire WORLD! I intend to help keep it that way. Sturgeon research is literally my life work. I have chosen to stay in research specifically to work with them. It is my passion. And consequently I may get overly free with my opinions. I will always separate my opinions from facts and information.

[Tacklebuster]

First and foremost, I didn't fight the fish for 3 hours :mad: 12 foot plus fish to the boat in 15 to 30 minutes, give me a stinking break :hoboy: I got a great graemlins/idea.gif let's close the selective coho season because quite a few native fish are hooked. Better yet, shut down the springer fishing cause a guy hooked and fought a native for 15 minutes before it was brought boatside and released when it was pretty spent. Bottom line is do what you can to cause as little stress as possible to the fish and let them go in good shape. I'm no Harvard grad but when an 8 foot fish has been caught as many times as 2 to 3 times in one day and has 4 leaders hanging out of it's mouth, the stress level is no different than a fish that gave out more tussle than most, then released back to the deep with no more, or less than it had before the battle. I don't mean to ramble or justify a situation but before someone calls another person or persons a "moron", they may better know the situation a little different.

[fishbait]

Some very valid thought on both sides of this issue, that is if there are sides. Fact is that as long as the regs allow, you can fish for these spanning adults almost whenever and wherever you want.

After seeing an 11ft plus dead adult (not one of ours) floating down past our boat a few (many) years ago below bonneville while a very large adult was taking me downstream, that was my last trip targeting oversized within a few miles of the dam. We usually did not have to come off the hook, except for the really big ones, so I felt we didnt really tire/hurt the fish all that much. But still, I was not absolutely sure just how much we did hurt these fish. I believe that that is the area where these fish spawn, and when I want oversized there are lots of areas where I can catch them and feel better about the fact that I am hooking, fighting and landing (hopefully) adults that are not currently set to or involved in spawnning.

That is my 0.02 cents worth and works for me. However it is anyones right to fish below bonneville and catch as many as their arms will allow.

[Nanook]

[ 11-25-2002, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: ****** ]

[fisheromen]

Thanks for the great info STG Rule! I love this board!