Sturgeon Spearing Starts Today

For some outdoors sportsmen and women, weeks of scouting Lake Winnebago for the perfect site to set up shop for sturgeon spearing season has come to fruition.

Today at daybreak hundreds of people will be in their shanties with spear in hand waiting for a sturgeon to swim by. The hours for spearing are 7 AM to 1 PM for each of the next 16 days or until one of the season caps are met which this year include 714 adult females and 985 males. Numbers some say will not be met with ice conditions keeping many away this year.

Local fishing clubs are restricting trucks and cars from using their ice roads which makes the job of getting set up more difficult and time consuming.

During the 2022 season, 12,694 people purchased spearing licenses and spearers harvested 1,519 sturgeon from the entire Winnebago System. Of these fish, 1,169
sturgeon were harvested from Lake Winnebago, resulting in a success rate of 9.6%, making it the second-highest success rate in the last seven years.

Its estimated there are 41,000 adult sturgeon in Lake Winnebago.