Hey guys,
We're asking that folks do their best to leave those sturgeon alone. We realize you might accidentally hook one, but if you do please break it off when you realize it is a sturgeon, particularly if it is foul hooked. There is no open season on lake sturgeon in the Manistee River, and according to the law it is illegal to "take or attempt to take" fish out of season. As you probably know, the sturgeon are there attempting to spawn at this time of year. Hooking them and playing them to exhaustion is not going to help them as they try to reproduce.
Lake sturgeon are a state-threatened species in Michigan, and numbers are very low particularly in Lake Michigan. Typically we have less than 30 or so adult sturgeon that run the Manistee River each year to spawn, and of those only a few are females. This is a population that is at a very low level. The bright side is that natural reproduction has been documented in the Manistee River, so we're hoping that over time, we can build a large, fishable population of lake sturgeon. It will take many years though, as female lake sturgeon do not mature until 20-25 years of age, and even once they are mature they only spawn once every three years or so. Let's not harass these amazing creatures while they are trying to reproduce. If we play our cards right, perhaps in the future our children and grandchildren will get the opportunity to legally fish for large numbers of them in our Lake Michigan tribs.
Thanks for your cooperation.