Thin ice, fewer spearers stretch sturgeon season

The entire effort of spearing a lake sturgeon through the ice hinges on a single toothpick.

Holding Randy Lee’s heavy, handmade stainless-steel spear head to the metal end of a long wooden spear handle is a toothpick that is slid through holes in each piece. When the spear is thrown toward a swimming sturgeon, handle and spear stay together. A twist of the handle separates the two when the toothpick breaks, allowing the fish to be dragged up and inside the shanty by a rope. A second, tethered rope keeps the handle from sinking to the bottom.

Spearing a sturgeon through a 4-by-8-foot hole in the ice seems like an improbable task, and for many of the frozen chosen, it is. Some faithfully drag their shanties and gear every February to Lake Winnebago, sit six hours a day staring down that greenish, eerie hole and may not see a fish for years, even decades. Patience doesn’t fully cover it.

The odds of spearing a fish are about 9% on Lake Winnebago, where the water is 9-16 feet deep, and if the water’s murky as it is some years, the chances of seeing a sturgeon near the bottom are slim.

On the Winnebago system’s upriver lakes (Poygan, Butte des Morts and Winneconne), the water is mostly much shallower and often clearer, offering better views of the gray submarines. Odds exceed 60% for taking a fish there.

Spearers on all lakes use PVC pipe “ladders” or white siding strips to lay on the bottom to help the spearer see shadows of fish that pass over them. Spearers used to use cut potatoes, but the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources now requires spearers to retrieve everything they lower down the hole.

The DNR used to allow spearing on the upriver lakes every five years, and most spearers would then abandon the big lake in favor of the shallow ones. Increasing interest in the sport and closely monitored harvest quotas prompted the DNR to use a lottery system in 2007 for the upriver lakes tags.

Now, it takes about seven or eight years of application points to draw an upriver lakes tag. Just 500 tags a year are issued for the upriver lakes, while there is no limit on Winnebago tags.

I was one of those lucky 500 this season after eight long years of waiting. I’d tried spearing on Winnebago once, and found it like staring at the old TV test pattern for six hours. I vowed I’d never spear on that lake again.

I was so excited before opening day that I could barely fall asleep. The alarm clock went off at 4 a.m. and I was soon meeting my co-worker Chris Lee and his father, Randy Lee, both of rural Winneconne. Randy’s brother, Ray Lee, joined us.

All three are experienced spearers and graciously agreed to supply me with the spears, gaff, shanty and most other gear necessary to stick a sturgeon. Their passion for the sport is palpable, but somewhat hard to understand for a novice.

“It’s a pretty unique sport,” Chris Lee said. “Outside of Wisconsin, nobody’s heard of it. I like it better than deer hunting because it’s different.”

Chris, 37, has managed to spear four sturgeon in his life. Like many of his family members, they only spear on Poygan, never Winnebago. Someone in their family or group of friends seems to have an upriver lakes tag each season, but it’s a long wait for that cherished piece of paper for each of them.

Randy steers his well-worn Chevy truck toward our shanties in the dark. On opening day, we bang around over frozen ruts, following trails in the snow. Unlike Lake Winnebago, where the ice is dicey and many spearers were forced to use ATVs and snowmobiles to move their shanties and gear, Poygan has a solid 12 to 15 inches of ice (the latter is protected from the wind and ice shoves, which helped make portions of Winnebago ‘s ice thin).

Sunday’s blizzard left more than 6 inches of fresh snow on the lakes. Monday’s trek to our shanties was guesswork, and Randy aimed at barely visible, drifted truck tracks. He turned on a GPS unit, but it was slow to warm up. We finally spotted a shanty in the pre-dawn, the landscape looking like the South Pole.

Chris and I sat in the shanty for two mornings, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., the legal spearing hours. We never saw so much as a bluegill. We were in about 9 feet of water, and could barely see the strips of white vinyl siding placed on the bottom. Chris returned to work Monday, while I took the day off and tried another shanty owned by a friend, located to the south in shallower water.

The water here was only 6 feet deep and I could clearly see the white PVC pipe “ladder” on the bottom.

The decoys (traditional carved wooden ones resembling fish and random, oddball ones like a white ceramic coffee cup, a shiny blank CD and a flashy copper jello mold) didn’t work.

At 11:20 a.m. Monday, my painful boredom was snapped when I saw a fish swimming close to the surface! I grabbed the spear where it hung from the shanty’s ceiling by a nail and readied it. The narrow, long fish had a spot on its tail. Not a sturgeon. I relaxed and went back to being bored.

The brightest spot of the weekend occurred just after 8 a.m. Sunday, when we heard some yelling and saw three people in a shanty 100 yards from us waving. A 55.2-inch, 36-pound sturgeon lay in the snow, and retired Winneconne School District special education teacher Diane Maki, 65, was more than happy to get her photo taken with her first fish.

Her home is within a few hundred yards of shore in the town of Poygan and Spruce Lane, where we put in.

“It took me by surprise because it was on my side,” she said, “He came in more on the top, above the decoy. Josh (Revoir, son-in-law,) said, ‘Go!’”

Her aim was true and four of the spear’s five tines stuck the fish just behind the gills.

“It didn’t put up a fight right away,” Maki said.

She also shared the shanty with husband Larry Maki, who speared a 60-pounder in 2017.

She’s going to keep applying for upriver lakes tags, especially since the state allows tag holders to give them to kids ages 12 to 17, and she has eight grandchildren who may want to try this patience-testing, unique sport.

With just a bit over half last year’s shanty count this year on all the lakes, and fewer spearers, the harvest is down, too.

As of Tuesday, Winnebago spearers had tagged just 102 fish and upriver lakes spearers had tagged 163, both far from the quotas set for female and male fish. The upriver lakes season is often over in just a few days, but spearers there will enjoy another weekend on the ice.

Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.

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