By Julie Bergman, Northern Light Region (Baudette, MN)
Boaters on Lake of the Woods may have noticed something unusual bobbing on the water this summer: orange buoys marking the ends of 300-foot gillnets, four to a site, part of a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources effort to sample lake sturgeon on Lake of the Woods. There were about 40 sites on the lake that the DNR sampled there this year as part of a lake-wide survey spanning 136 sites in all.
The netting is only one piece of a much larger, coordinated set of sturgeon research and monitoring programs the DNR runs across Lake of the Woods and the Rainy River, according to Matt Skoog, DNR area fisheries supervisor in Baudette. Skoog outlined seven separate sturgeon-focused sampling and tagging programs, plus two additional efforts tied to water level management, that together track a population still rebuilding from near-collapse a century ago. Michael Wolf, also with the DNR’s Baudette office, provided specific numbers behind several of those programs.
Large-Mesh Netting Across the Lake
The large-mesh Lake of the Woods netting survey โ the one responsible for the nets spotted near the Angle โ ran from 2021 through 2026, typically setting nets in early June before the water warms past 70 degrees, which helps limit stress and mortality on captured sturgeon, Wolf said.
Crews divided the Minnesota portion of Lake of the Woods into four sections: three nearshore areas in 5 to 20 feet of water โ Muskeg Bay, Big Traverse, and the Northwest Angle โ plus one offshore area in 25 to 35 feet of water. In total, the survey covered 136 sites: 32 in Muskeg, 24 in Big Traverse, 40 at the Northwest Angle, and 40 offshore. Crews set four nets at each site, for 544 nets total. Each net measured 300 feet long, and the four nets at a given site used different mesh sizes โ 4, 5, 6 and 7 inches โ to target sturgeon of different sizes, Wolf said.
Catch rates varied notably by area: crews caught just under one fish per net at the south shore sites in Muskeg and Big Traverse, about half that rate at the Northwest Angle, and far fewer offshore, where crews averaged only about one fish for every seven nets, according to Wolf.
Sturgeon sampled this year ranged from 20 to 72 inches, with a mean length of about 50 inches. Crews caught two fish over 70 inches. The largest was a 71-inch sturgeon weighing 98 pounds, caught just south of Oak Island, Wolf said.
A Parallel Survey on the Rainy River
A similar survey covers the Rainy River, Skoog said, with the same basic objectives and methods as the lake-wide netting effort. The river is divided into sampling reaches, and every reach is sampled once every three years. Timing depends on water temperature โ the survey runs in either August or October, whichever keeps stress and mortality on captured sturgeon to a minimum.
A Decade-Long Telemetry Study
Perhaps the most ambitious of the programs Skoog described is a multi-year telemetry study tracking sturgeon movement throughout the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods, running through 2030. So far, 70 lake sturgeon have been surgically implanted with transmitters โ 20 juveniles and 50 adults, Wolf said.
Those fish are tracked by a network of 17 receivers: six in the lake itself, at Zippel Bay, Rocky Point, Stony Point and Little Massacre Island, plus two more near Kenora maintained by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources; eight along the Rainy River; and one each in the Rapid, Little Fork and Big Fork rivers.
Early results already show a clear split in behavior by age, Wolf said. Most juvenile sturgeon have stayed within the lower Rainy River, roughly between Fourmile Bay and Vidas Landing. A handful made small movements into Lake of the Woods, but none were detected past the Zippel Bay receiver โ though one 24-inch juvenile did travel roughly 30 miles in just a few months. Adults have behaved very differently, sometimes covering more than 100 miles in a matter of days, moving into and throughout Lake of the Woods as well as up and down the river. The general pattern so far: river movement in spring and fall, and movement throughout the lake during summer.
Watching the Next Generation
A separate annual survey focuses specifically on juvenile sturgeon in the Rainy River, conducted each August or October using smaller-mesh experimental gillnets, Skoog said. Biologists use the survey to monitor juvenile relative abundance, tag subadult fish with both internal and external tags, and identify where juvenile sturgeon density varies along the river โ work aimed at pinpointing critical juvenile habitat.
Nearly Every Fish Gets Tagged
Outside of the dedicated surveys, Skoog said the DNR tags nearly every sturgeon its crews encounter with two tags: an internal PIT tag, which is highly unlikely to be lost, and an external Carlin Dangler tag that anglers can read and report. Comparing capture records over time lets biologists track individual growth and broader movement patterns โ for instance, a fish tagged at one site and later recaptured at another. Anglers who catch a tagged sturgeon are encouraged to report the tag number, catch location, and the fish’s approximate length to the DNR, whether the fish is kept or released.
Anglers who report tags typically receive the fish’s tagging and recapture history in return.
Tagging on the Spawning Grounds
During the spawning run, DNR crews also capture sturgeon directly at spawning sites โ using both gillnets and hand-grabbing โ specifically to examine the sex ratio and size structure of the fish that are spawning each year, Skoog said.
Water Levels and International Cooperation
Beyond the netting and tagging programs, Skoog pointed to two efforts tied to water-level management on the Rainy River system. The first is a modeling project led by the International Joint Commission’s Adaptive Management Committee, in cooperation with Environment and Climate Change Canada, examining how water-level management affects lake sturgeon spawning habitat using hydrology data alongside substrate and depth mapping.
The second is a standing arrangement in which the Adaptive Management Committee and local technical advisors provide water-level preferences intended to benefit sturgeon spawning each year, which are then worked into the operational rule curve governing Rainy Lake and the Rainy River. Minnesota DNR Fisheries and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry both provide guidance on those recommendations, alongside representatives from Rainy River First Nations.
Recovery on Display: A New State Record
The scale of the sturgeon population’s recovery was on vivid display this spring. On April 18, angler Travis Keating landed an 80-inch lake sturgeon on the Rainy River during an annual sturgeon-fishing trip with friends, fighting the fish through a bitter cold front with wind gusts over 40 mph and wind chills near 5 below zero. The DNR certified the catch on May 4 as a new catch-and-release state record. Using standard length-girth-weight charts, the fish โ with a 38-inch girth โ was estimated at roughly 165 pounds.
Fisheries officials pointed to the catch as further evidence of the decadeslong recovery underway in the Lake of the Woods Rainy River system, noting that very large, old individuals are increasingly turning up in a population that was nearly wiped out by commercial overharvest a century ago. DNR’s own survey crews landed a smaller but still notable specimen of their own this year โ the 71-inch, 98-pound sturgeon caught near Oak Island during the large-mesh netting survey.
Taken together, the DNR’s sturgeon work โ from summer gillnetting to a telemetry study running through 2030 to international water-level talks โ shows a population being watched from nearly every angle, even as full recovery remains a slow, multi-decade process still playing out on the water.
