Shortnosed sturgeon catch in the Potomac is a great sign

Here’s the thing about fishing: you can pick your buddy’s brain until his eyeballs pop, use the hottest lure supposedly ever made and buy the most sophisticated equipment, and still success can vary. On very rare occasions, you might even catch the fish of a lifetime, one you never expected.

Such is the fish tale that Josh Cohn of Washington, D.C. shared, at least the last part. On a recent Friday afternoon, fishing on the Potomac across from the famed Fletchers Boat House, he and Connor Lynch of Potomac were jigging for carp and catfish when Lynch accidentally foul hooked a shortnosed sturgeon. (Because you need to know: Lynch was using a quillback jig, tied by Alex Binsted of binstedlures.com, who is also the manager of Fletcher’s Boathouse.)

“I was able to free it from the hook without seeing any blood in the water, and was too shocked at what I was looking at to think to tape [measure] it, but I’d guess it was a little longer than two feet,” Josh shared with me via text. “I kept it in the water the whole time and it swam off on its way. I’m still in awe that I got to see one of those in the Potomac!” He adds that they didn’t notice anything resembling a tag or tagging attempt like an incision.

The last time biologists caught a shortnose sturgeon in the upper Potomac was in 2007, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The unusual catch is welcomed news because sturgeon require good water quality to survive, and the presence of this very rare fish could indicate clean-up efforts are working.

Shortnose sturgeon live primarily the rivers and coastal waters from Florida to Canada, but unlike Atlantic sturgeon, the blunt nosed variety spends relatively little time in the ocean. Adult shortnose move far upstream into freshwater to spawn, after which they’ll quickly swim back downstream to the estuaries.

Atlantic sturgeons are anadromous, spending most of their lives cruising saltier coastal waters until it’s time to spawn. They then migrate into estuaries like the Chesapeake, swimming way up freshwater creeks and rivers to procreate. A long-lived fish, it takes decades for sturgeons to mature sexually.

These sturgeons are easily the largest native Chesapeake Bay fish, with males capable of reaching at least 90 pounds while females can top out around 150 pounds or more. The largest specimen on record came from Canadian waters, where it grew to 14 feet and tipped the scales at more than 800 pounds.

Once abundant, sturgeons were important food for native people and early settlers. In later years, the emerging wealthy class acquired a seemingly insatiable taste for caviar made from sturgeon roe, which, combined with decades of habitat loss, dams blocking spawning grounds and pollution, decimated them.

Although federal law now protects critical river habitat for the remaining sturgeon, those same factors continue to hinder sturgeon’s recovery. Other threats loom too, such as being snared as by-catch in commercial nets and suffering ship strikes when traversing deep-water shipping channels. Another big fish, the invasive blue catfish, poses a significant threat. Because they’re such voracious eaters whose range is expanding, researchers fear they’ll devour juvenile sturgeon before they reach adulthood.

For all intents and purposes, just two decades ago conventional wisdom held that the Chesapeake stock of Atlantic sturgeon were nearly extinct. What researchers have learned in recent years, however, is nothing short of astounding. For example, not only do sturgeon spawn in the James River in the spring and fall, there are two separate races. Also, they’re spawning in much smaller tributaries. Last year, Maryland biologists caught eight ready-to-spawn sturgeon in the Marshyhope Creek on the Eastern Shore. Biologists think it’s possible other riverine systems — the Rappahannock, Potomac, possibly even the Choptank and Chester — may also support small sturgeon stocks.

Surprisingly, the U.S. Navy is one of the biggest research investors, due to potential impacts to their operations if they interfere with the endangered sturgeon. According to the Bay Journal, the Navy has foot the bill to establish a network of 75 receivers in the lower Bay and implanted acoustic tags to track the sturgeons’ movements. Similarly, Maryland’s Anadromous Restoration Project maintains 26 receivers in the Nanticoke River system alone, with the majority in Marshyhope Creek.

Simply put, more research and effort has yielded much new and valuable information about this once prolific Bay fish. Imagine what new things we might learn if decision-makers directed similar academic energy and rigor on other key Bay species such as stripers and menhaden.

Most of the big fish I’ve caught are your typical Chesapeake varietals — rockfish, cobia, black and red drums. Ancient mariners like sturgeon fascinate me, but I’ve yet to even spot a breaching sturgeon.

Glean what you like from Josh and Connor’s encounter with one of the Bay’s original swimmers. It tells me that I haven’t spent nearly as much time on the water as I should. But it also tells me that while some may not see the value of such focused scientific inquiry on a fish you can’t eat or that doesn’t hit a lure or fly, it’s important work nonetheless because it enhances our understanding about the world we share with other animals.

We should aspire to something greater than simply being the most efficient consumers of the world’s natural bounty.