Sturgeon spearing on Lake Poygan: 30 hours by the hole

It’s strange what you start thinking when you’ve been staring down a sturgeon spearing hole for hours.

An old Humble Pie tune came to mind: “30 Days in the Hole.” This 1972 tune from the band’s album “Smokin’” talks about someone getting caught with drugs and earning a jail sentence: “30 days in the hole.”

When my spearing ended at 1 p.m. on Sunday, I’d spent exactly 30 hours staring down a 3-by-6-foot hole in the ice of Lake Poygan, crouching on a bar stool in a dark shanty. The stool makes it easier to see in the greenish, glowing hole — I honestly never touched a drop of alcohol in the five days I’d spent in a shanty, although I was definitely not the typical spearer for drinking only iced tea.

But if you aren’t much of a drinker when you start this sport, there’s a good chance you will want to learn by the time you call it quits for the season. I thought the wait for a deer to come past tested my patience for years as a bowhunter, and it still does. But sturgeon spearing makes watching paint dry seem like a front-row seat at the Indy 500.

Randy Lee of rural Winneconne did everything an experienced sturgeon man could to help me jab one of these living dinosaurs. He supplied the shanty, cut the hole with a special sled-equipped chainsaw, supplied the beautiful stainless-steel spear heads he handcrafted more than 30 years ago (and named for his children), then drove me every morning and afternoon for five days across the ice-rutted lake in his well-seasoned Chevy pickup truck.

Had I let him down? Had I been looking away from the hole when a gray submarine passed by, avoiding the spear?

As the days slip by, the spearer becomes even more focused, not wanting to look away for even a minute, fearing he will miss that once-in-a-decade (or even lifetime) shot at a sturgeon!

The spearing Feb. 15 went faster because I was sitting with Randy’s son, Chris Lee, a co-worker of mine at 4imprint in Oshkosh. Chatting about sturgeon and life in general helps the time pass. We are in about 5 feet of water, and the bottom is visible.

Chris, 37, is a seasoned spearer, having tagged four fish on Poygan in his life. Although Randy has successfully speared on Lake Winnebago, they both now focus their spearing efforts on Poygan, where the shallower, clearer water improves the odds. But since the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources started a lottery system for upriver lakes sturgeon tags in 2007, it now takes about seven years (sometimes eight) of applying to finally get a tag there! This means that dedicated Poygan spearers, like some sort of human cicadas, only get to spread their spearing wings every seven years.

But that doesn’t stop the Lees from enjoying aspects of the sport annually.

Randy most enjoys setting people up for the task.

“I haven’t applied for a tag in three years,” he said. “I just like being out here, seeing everyone and talking to them.” He also visits the “party shacks” — oversized shanties or even tents set up strictly for groups of non-spearers — for a cold beer and a hand or two of sheepshead.

Randy walked into his brother Ray’s shanty that Saturday morning, just in time to see a long, gray shadow approaching the hole.

“There’s a fish!” he yelled. Ray struggled to get the spear’s handle free from a hook in the ceiling where it hung.

Seconds later, the sturgeon started to turn, possibly seeing the movement above. But it was too late for the 25-pound, 4-foot fish. Ray threw and his aim was true. The tines of one of Randy’s handmade spear heads found the back and penetrated. It was just after 7:30 a.m. and in minutes, Ray Lee was on his way to Critter’s Sports in Winneconne, one of the designated weigh stations.

Randy’s phone never stops ringing. He knows all the spearers in this section of ice, and his popularity never wanes. Later that morning, another friend, Kevin Larson, jabs a bigger sturgeon. Larson had just cut in that morning about 100 yards from our shanty. In all, four fish are speared close to us since opening day (Feb. 8).

Ray’s daughter, Alysha Fuss, who also has a Poygan tag, moves into her dad’s shanty, hoping his luck will rub off. She’s joined by her husband, Adam Fuss. Watching others spear is almost a sport on its own, since tags take so long to get.

There was a knock on our shanty door Saturday morning. “DNR,” came a voice. Spearers are required to let game wardens enter. When the door opened, it was Adam, just joking with us! He sat with us for awhile, sharing a few laughs.

But the joke was on him. Less than 15 minutes later, there was another knock on the door. “DNR.” This time, it was the real deal! A female game warden checked my tag and left.

Sunday was the longest of all for me. Those minutes passed by so slowly, but I maintained my confidence that I’d get one. That didn’t happen.

We pulled the shanty, a borrowed one with a cracked trailer tongue that Randy jury-rigged with a ratchet strap. As we bounced across the massive ruts of Poygan, I heard a loud bump.

The tongue had pulled completely free of the shanty. He tossed the damaged tongue into the bed of his truck, leaving the shanty for removal another day, perhaps on a trailer.

For only the second time since 2007, the upriver lakes season will go the full 16 days, ending Sunday. Lake Winnebago’s season also went the full term, mostly because of questionable ice. As of Tuesday, upriver lakes spearers were still 30 fish shy of the 95-fish adult female quota, and Winnebago spearers were 710 fish shy of the 855-fish adult female quota. Only 270 fish have been speared on the upriver lakes and 296 on Winnebago so far, a fraction of most years.

Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.

Category: