Sturgeon in the Cumberland
- This topic has 14 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Nov 10, 2006 at 4:48 am by
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This is pretty cool. Last week the Tennessee Wildlife Resourse Agency (TWRA) released over 600 juvenile sturgeon into the Cumberland River. The four-month-old fish range in size from three inches to one foot in length and will not hit sexual maturity for an estimated 14 to 25 years. The local re-planting is part of a reintroduction program already begun in East Tennessee where more than 30,000 fish have been stocked.
The fish can live for over a century and grow in excess of 1,000 pounds in North American waters. For now any fish caught must be released, however TWRA would like reports on where and how big the caught fish were.
I doubt that many of us would ever dredge up a sturgeon on a fly, but it would still be pretty cool to catch a 100 pound fish out of an area river using gear and every fishes’ favorite food–a clump of chicken livers.
I am excited about this too SS. It’s good to see TRWA spending money wisely. Future generations will appreciate this resource.
Mike,
You wouldn’t be saying–under your breath–that the Winter stocking program is unwise, would you?
Yes. That one I don’t care for.
I would really like to see more effort restoring the numbers of Quail in our state and less dumping of dead Trout into warm water streams and ponds. If they do as good a job on Quail as they did with the Turkeys then we will all own bird dogs again some day.
I haven’t hunted for quail since I was and boy and living in AL. Is there enough suitable public land to hunt that a restoration project would be worth while. Lack of land access is what led me to put my gun away.
Hell we allready have those big head asian carp jumping out of the water and hitting people over here, have those moved into florida yet?
Dunfly nothing would make me happier then if TWRA would stock our lakes with some sort of freshwater Great White shark. Hell I’ll settle for Alligators, Piranha, Anaconda, anything that will get some of the wakeboard crowds off the water in warm weather. 😉
SS I think there’s plenty of land if you drive an hour or two from Nastyville. I also hunted them as a young boy and those are some fine memories. I can still see my dad in his brown and blaze orange jacket working those dogs over, and smell that aroma that a clean Remington 1100 makes like it was yesterday.
There’s always Pheasant Creek Preserve….
Before you guys get to excited, you need to consider the threat released on the boating public. On the Suwanee River, sturgeon have been known to jump up and wack people in the face.
The first time one hits a jet skier, I’ll personally pay TWRA to stock another 30,000.
bd
and less dumping of dead Trout into warm water streams and ponds.
No kidding. Makes sense to me. How about turning a river like a Hiwassee into a trophy smallmouth river?
These are true sturgeon – there are several species, and these aren’t the belugas that are harvested for caviar in Russia, but they’re sturgeon nonetheless.
bd
BD correct me if I’m wrong here but didn’t the Sturgeon population suffer overfishing and harvesting of the eggs? I guess they are just a lowere grade Caviar then beluga but caviar all the same. I want to say there was once a healthy population of them here at one time???
BD correct me if I’m wrong here but didn’t the Sturgeon population suffer overfishing and harvesting of the eggs?
Caviar harvest and overfishing did indeed thin the sturgeon out, though like you said, our domestic caviar is considered inferior to beluga (though this may be more about snobbery than anything).
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