Art Lander’s Outdoors: Ancient sturgeon on the comeback road in Kentucky

This is the second article in a series about Kentucky’s ancient fish

The sturgeon family, Acipenseridae, dates back to the Triassic geologic period, some 250 million years ago, a time when the Earth’s land mass was concentrated into one supercontinent. The family includes 27 species worldwide, four that may be extinct. At one time there were 20 species of sturgeons in the Northern Hemisphere.

These ancient fish are whiskered and toothless, with a tapered snout and long tail. Omnivorous bottom feeders, sturgeons have long, slender bodies covered with bony plates called scutes.

There are two species of sturgeons in Kentucky — the shovelnose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus), and the lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens).

The shovelnose sturgeon has a geographic range that extends up the Mississippi River basin from Louisiana, westward to the upper Missouri River, and eastward up the Ohio River to western Pennsylvania.

Its distribution in Kentucky is confined to the Ohio River, sustained by natural reproduction, but historical records indicate that the species was once found in the Licking and Big Sandy rivers.

The lake sturgeon has much wider geographic range — the Mississippi River basin from the Tennessee River northward, through the drainages of the Great Lake, the St. Lawrence River, Hudson Bay, and the Saskatchewan River.

Its distribution in Kentucky once included the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland River drainages, but by the 1950s only a remnant population remained in the Cumberland River.

Commercial overharvest, pollution, dam construction, siltation and stream channelization eliminated most of the lake sturgeon populations throughout the southeastern states.

Restoration Project Begins in 2007

In 2007 the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources began a long-term project to restore this unique, native species, with the goal of creating a self-sustaining wild population in the river where historically the fish made a last stand.

Kentucky’s restoration project is part of a regional effort to re-establish lake sturgeon in the Southeast. Tennessee started a restoration project in 2001, and Georgia in 2003.

The lake sturgeon restoration area in Kentucky extends from Wolf Creek Dam, which impounds Lake Cumberland, upstream to Cumberland Falls, and includes the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, the Rockcastle River, lower Laurel River, Buck Creek and Fishing Creek.

The upper Mississippi River is the source of the lake sturgeon stocked in Kentucky. Fertilized eggs from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources are hatched at the Pfeiffer Fish Hatchery in Frankfort. The young are reared up to about 10 inches, marked to distinguish their year class, then stocked.

Since the beginning of the restoration project a total of about 20,000 juvenile lake sturgeon have been released at the mouth of Laurel River on the Cumberland River, and Alum Ford, on the Big South Fork.

Population Recovery

Lake sturgeon population recovery is a long, slow process because it takes 15 to 20 years before adults reproduce, and adults don’t spawn annually, so recruitment of young fish into the population takes time.

Recent sampling has confirmed that the stocked fish are thriving. One one trip during the winter of 2015 fishery crews captured 25 lake sturgeon, including a 35-inch fish that was from the first stocking in 2007.

Life History and Biology

The lake sturgeon is truly a giant among fish native to North America. In northern waters it may reach a length of over seven feet and weigh more than 300 pounds.

The lake sturgeon has a heavy, torpedo-shaped body lined with five rows of bony plates (scutes).

Coloration changes with age. Young sturgeons are boldly marked with brown blotches and spiny scutes. As they grow, they lose their spiny appearance and become plain gray to olive-colored.

Lake sturgeon have four fleshy barbels, or feelers, covered with taste buds under their snouts. They feed by raking the bottom with these barbels, then rapidly extending their tubular mouths to suck in a variety of small invertebrates living on the bottoms of lakes and streams, including aquatic insects, snails, leeches and crayfish.

The lake sturgeon is a slow-growing, late-maturing species. Males, which can live 60 years, participate in spawning every two to four years, and females, which grow larger than males, spawn every four to eight years and can live 80 to 150 years.

Adults may migrate more than 100 miles to spawn. Spawning occurs in groups over shallow, gravel shoals of rivers or rocky shorelines of lakes.

During this process, males thrash their tails and sometimes leap entirely from the water. One or more males will flank a female, ready to fertilize her eggs as soon as she deposits them on the rocky bottom. Females may lay up to 700,000 eggs in one spawning season.

Catch and Release

Since lake sturgeon feed primarily on invertebrates they aren’t that susceptible to being caught on hook and line, but anglers fishing on the bottom with live bait could catch a lake sturgeon.

Lake sturgeon may not be creeled. Fishing is catch and release only, statewide.

The current state record lake sturgeon was caught by Barney Frazier, of Corbin, Ky. The fish was 51 inches long, weighed 36 pounds, eight ounces, and was taken from Lake Cumberland on Oct. 3, 1954.

Any sturgeon caught by anglers should be photographed if possible and then released immediately. Anglers are encouraged to report catches at (800) 858-1549.

The sturgeon is a “living fossil,” one of Kentucky’s remarkable ancient fish.

Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for NKyTribune and KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.