for elusive pallid sturgeon
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
This week marked the beginning of the annual “pallid sturgeon hunt” on the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers.
This “hunt” is an event where fisheries biologists and pallid sturgeon researchers from multiple agencies come together to capture adult pallid sturgeon. Then, the adults are taken to the hatchery, spawned, and the young produced are raised, then released back to the wild.
Since this endangered species is having trouble reproducing and recruiting on its own under existing habitat conditions, pallid sturgeon rely on this stocking program in order to replenish their population until habitat conditions are improved.
Currently, there are approximately 150 individuals left in the population living in the Yellowstone River and lower Missouri River. The numbers suggest that there is about a 2:1 ratio of males to females or about 100 males and 50 females. We don’t know exactly, but females need at least 5 years between spawning cycles to fully develop the eggs.
As a rough guess, that only leaves about 10 females that are ready to spawn each year. Without any habitat alterations or the assistance of a stocking program, the species would most likely go extinct from this area of the river around the year 2018. That’s before some of the students that have adopted these fish will graduate from college.
So how does all this relate to the Missouri River Adopt-a-Fish program? Since there are so few fish out there and there’s a whole lot of river to look for them in, we can locate these radioed pallid sturgeon and that will give us a very good idea of where to start netting for fish.
Where our radioed fish are, there is a good chance that others will be there as well. Unfortunately, there are no “honey holes” this year. The fish are very scattered and fishing is tough.
Even though we get to use nets, there are still bad fishing days. How’s that saying go? A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work – oh, wait a minute.
Last week’s rain and snow in Billings and Miles City gave the Yellowstone River just a little pulse, as well as muddying up the water. This enticed a lot of our radioed fish to venture up the Yellowstone River now, even though most fish won’t spawn until May or June.
While some fish are exhibiting only a little movement, our Adopt-a-Fish movers of the week were paddlefish #3 and shovelnose #3. This paddlefish moved almost 85 miles up the Missouri River, while the shovelnose moved about 85 miles down the Missouri.
Missouri River Adopt-A-Fish is a joint effort of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Walleyes Unlimited, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and The Billings Gazette. Weekly updates will be posted on the Adopt-A-Fish site and in The Gazette each Thursday through April and May.