By Matt Preissner

It’s February on Lake Winnebago. It is not a very friendly place. Wind, cold, ice shoves, ice cracks spanning a foot or more.

Most times the ice is thick enough to hold the weight of a pickup truck. Fifteen-plus inches of ice can support a vehicle. On this occasion, ice conditions are not ideal. But no matter how thick the ice is, thousands of people will drag their ice shanties onto the frozen lake using four-wheelers, snowmobiles, or their 1974 International Scout II to get “cut in” for the yearly sturgeon spearing season.

A day or two before the season starts, shanties are towedto a desired spot. Depending on the size of the shanty, people will chisel a rough line into the ice to mark where to cut the hole. Long chainsaws are used to cut the hole. Some chainsaws are handheld, others are on a sled apparatus. The hole cannot be larger the forty-eight square feet, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Long poles with spikes are used to push the ice cake down, and under the ice. The shanty is placed over the hole, and snow is banked up around the shanty for added insulation and darkness. Inside, spearers drop decoys to see how far down they can see. Lake Winnebago on average is fifteen and a half feet deep, with twenty-one feet at its deepest. Several scenarios can muck up the water clarity, but if you can see bottom, it may be a good season.

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Lake Winnebago sprawls over parts of Winnebago, Calumet, and Fond du Lac counties and has one of the largest populations of lake sturgeon in North America. Although Native Americans and settlers had been spearing for generations, the first official season took place in 1932. In 2020, 12,721 licenses were sold.

A lot of rules and regulations have changed over the years. When I was a kid, we would get on the ice around seven in the morning. Mom and dad would start the heater in the shanty, chisel out the inch of ice that had formed on the hole overnight, drop the decoys, and get the spear hung up. We would bring our jigs, and some minnows, and fish out of the sturgeon hole to pass the time. Eventually my sister and I would get bored and go outside to play with other bored kids. The adults would stare attentively down the yellow, cloudy hole, waiting for a sturgeon to swim by. We would be out there till four in the afternoon. That’s a long day for a bored kid! Then we would do it again the next day.

In 1993, angling through a sturgeon hole was prohibited because some spearers were hooking sturgeon. A few years later, the DNR was concerned about the sturgeon population, so it enacted a new set of rules. A single day of spearing is from seven in the morning to one in the afternoon, and speared sturgeon need to be registered by two. The minimum length is thirty-six inches. The rules also capped how many sturgeon can be harvested in a season. The 2021 season has juvenile females capped at four-hundred and thirty, adult females at nine-hundred and fifty, and males at twelve hundred. If ninety to ninety-nine percent of the caps are reached, the season ends twenty-four hours later.

To give you an idea how large a lake sturgeon can get, the largest ever speared was in 2010. It weighed two-hundred and twelve pounds and was eighty-four and a quarter inches long. The one and only sturgeon my dad speared was in 1990. It was fifty-eight inches long and forty-four pounds. That’s average.

Sturgeon, especially females, can live well beyond one-hundred. Sturgeon are bottom feeders. They enjoy eating lake fly larva. That’s why water clarity is crucial. If you cannot see the bottom, there could be a sturgeon party going on, and you wouldn’t know it.

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What makes this sport so interesting is that all our fishing equipment is homemade.

Shanties are built on skids. If you want to be the envy of your spearing friends, build a shanty on a metal frame with wheels that fold over allowing it to drop flat on the ice. During the offseason, many people build spears and decoys for sale. Some are made and raffled off at the nearby bar.

Decoys come in many shapes, styles, color, and sizes. Typically, they are made of wood, filled with lead, and painted. My cousin makes decoys modeled after the style my great uncle created. Anything can be used as a decoy if you can bring it back up. The DNR frowns on throwing things into the hole if it cannot be retrieved. Sturgeons are very curious fish, so anything shiny can get their attention. I have seen people use coffee mugs, beer cans, or an old frying pan. My uncle uses an old Mickey Mouse bank.

Imagine you are sitting in a dark shanty. The propane heater is crackling behind you. It’s getting a little hot, maybe you should crack the door a little.  A car drives by and you can hear and feel every crack as it makes its way over the ice. The water starts bobbing up and down in the hole. “Beer Garden Polka” comes on the radio.

Then, there it is. A torpedo of a sturgeon moves beneath your feet. You pull the spear off the hook. You aim (you only have one shot) and drop it. Bam! You got it!  A cloud of mud kicks up. You can’t see anything, but you know you have it. Hold the rope tight, it’s going to pull you into the hole. With one hand you pull the decoys up quickly, so they don’t get tangled with the spear rope. Pure chaos is building in the shanty. You find a way to kick open the door and throw your chair outside. Hopefully, the monster sturgeon is tired out, and you can start pulling it up. After a few pulls, you are staring at your catch face to face. You grab the gaff hook off the wall and you pull the fish out of the water. You drag it outside onto the ice. You think to yourself, after thirty years of staring down a yellow cloudy hole, year after year, you finally got one. You crack open a beer and celebrate.

You are now part of the thirteen percent of spearers who get a fish!

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Photo at top of page:
On the third day out, Matt Preissner speared a sturgeon at 10:45 a.m. Monday, Feb. 15, on Lake Winnebago. It measured 62.3 inches and weighed 52.5 pounds. Credit: Matt Preissner

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More photos:

Suggested viewing and reading:

Preissner says: “If you would like to learn more about Lake Winnebago sturgeon spearing, watch this fantastic documentary”: The Frozen Chosen. A DVD can be purchased at the Fond du Lac Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

If you’re interested in spearing sturgeon, here are the 2021 DNR Winnebago System Sturgeon Spearing Regulations.

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Matt Preissner grew up in Sherwood, Wisconsin, where he learned the tradition of sturgeon spearing from his father. He has been spearing for about twenty-five years.  He resides in Madison with his wife Katie Sanders, and his son Jakob. Matt is a member of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.