I am working on a house on ottertail lake in Mn. It’s a large lake in Mn. The dnr started to stock some sturgeon in 1997 and again in 2002 and I believe yearly after that. I check their recent gill net catches and fish are over 50” now!!! Has anyone every stocked these in a pond? And would they survive, I have read that they migrate a lot. Just curious if this has been tried before.
Stocking lake sturgeon in ponds? Where would one get them except from the DNR or US Fish and Wildlife???
There would be no source to purchase lake sturgeon. Surely someone has thrown one in a pond, but I'd imagine it'd take very special conditions for them to survive in a small body of water such as a pond
There would be no source to purchase lake sturgeon. Surely someone has thrown one in a pond, but I'd imagine it'd take very special conditions for them to survive in a small body of water such as a pond
I've heard that they are superb smoked, although smoking is not recommended by the Sturgeon General.
You might consider paddlefish? They can survive in ponds.
Kansas state record 144 pound paddlefish was caught from a 5-acre farm pond in Atchison County.
That would be crazy to catch in a pond. Where can you get stocker size of the paddlefish. I'm going to end up with 20 different kinds of fish in my little pond someday.
There is a hatchery in MO called Osage Catfisheries near Lake of the Ozarks that has paddlefish. I have direct experience in several lakes stocked for Paddlefish Ranching in 2002. They get very large. We see them to 75-80 pounds. Almost impossible to hook since you have to snag them. At high densities, they may mess with your forage base since paddlefish feed on the base food later, phytoplankton.
Lake sturgeon are being raised and stocked but only by government agencies can you get the eggs, fry, or juveniles. If you don't kill them first these fish will outlive the pond owner; 80-150 yrs old. In my opinion lake sturgeon require better water quality 365 days than is present in most all ponds. Occasional low DO is likely to eliminate them.
https://www.toledoblade.com/environment/...-events-near-me
A guy can dream, right? It would be so cool to have a few. In any case I am going to catch one of these dinosaurs some day soon.
The same day as the OP, this was in our local news:
https://13wham.com/news/local/thousands-of-sturgeon-fish-released-into-genesee-riverIt is a big deal around here, as they were very rare for a while.
The local Seneca Park Zoo has some in aquariums, so they may do OK in contained bodies of water, but I would be concerned of their appetite when they get larger. To support a fish that size would require a lot of food.
They eat a kinds of stuff, similar to catfish. I think the key difference is they will eat things like mussels, where I believe catfish will not. If they do in fact eat zebra mussels, that is a win-win!
Looking up Wiki, there are some species that get over a ton!
What I wonder is how they managed to raise 2000 of them.