Winnebago Sturgeon and Walleye Report 7-27-2010

Get your Upriver Lakes Sturgeon Spearing Lottery Application by August 2
Just a quick note to let you know that the deadline for purchasing your application for getting into the 2011 Upriver Lakes Sturgeon Spearing Lottery is coming up fast. Normally you have until August 1 to purchase your $3 lottery application, but since Aug 1 is on a Sunday this year, you have until Monday August 2 to purchase your application. You can get your lottery application at any DNR license center or vendor.

Once all the applications are in our licensing folks will do the drawing and let spearers know no later than October 1 whether they were drawn for a tag. Group lottery applications of up to four persons are accepted for the Upriver Lakes lottery. Group applications must be submitted on-line athttps://www4.wildlifelicense.com/wi/start.php. Spearers that apply for but are not authorized to purchase an 2011 Upriver Lakes license receive a preference point, and can still purchase a license for Lake Winnebago, but must do so by the October 31 license sales deadline (spearers can only buy one tag or the other, not both). Sales for both Lake Winnebago and Upriver Lakes sturgeon spearing licenses end October 31. The Upriver Lakes sturgeon lottery fishery will limit participation to 500 tags in 2011.

Three more Winnebago Walleye Meetings August 10, 11, and 12
We had our first of four Winnebago Walleye Management public meetings on July 13 in Shiocton and a crowd of over 100 walleye enthusiasts made it a very eventful evening. We will be putting a full report together on the information we are providing and the input we receive at all four meetings once we wrap up the last meeting. We will be using the information and input to update our Winnebago Walleye Management Plan. I’ve attached a copy of the original flyer we sent out advertizing the meetings.

Hopefully we will see you in Neenah, Quinney, or Fond du Lac. We’ve got tons of very interesting information about our walleye population and fishery to share with you, and will also be asking you to give us your thoughts on the walleye fishery as well.

Other Winnebago Fish News
We’ll be conducting our first round of 2010 assessment trawling on Lake Winnebago next week, but we already know that there is a monstrous hatch of white bass out there from the shakedown cruise we conducted with the trawler last month. No word yet on the 2010 walleye hatch. Also, we saw earlier this week a modest kill of large numbers of young of year gizzard shad on the west end of Lake Poygan (due to the high inflows flushing out low oxygen backwaters into the streams and ultimately into the lake) - so it looks like the shad pulled of a good hatch - at least in the Upriver Lakes. Our trawling on Lake Winnebago will let us know if the good shad hatch is throughout the pool lakes.

Take care,

Ron

Ronald M. Bruch, PhD
Upper Fox-Wolf Fisheries Work Unit Supervisor
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
625 E County Rd Y, Suite 700
Oshkosh, WI 54901
USA

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