Joanne Grady holds a fish collected in Missouri River above I-70 bridge adjacent to Overton Bottoms Unit of the Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge. - FWS photo

The Columbia Fishery Resources Office began the 2007 sturgeon sampling season with the capture of two pallid sturgeon.  Two pallids caught in one day has only happened nine times in the last six years. 

They were caught in bend 23 which includes the lower end of the Overton Chute, a newly reconnected island side channel on the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge.  Bend 23 has been a pallid “hot spot,” producing five other pallid sturgeon since 1999, including the first one ever captured by the Columbia FRO, and one collected with the aid of Matt Hogan, Acting Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2002.

Potential causes for pallid aggregation in this area could be from the diverse habitats available within this bend.  There is island habitat offered by the Overton Chute, a tributary confluence, a large sandbar resulting from multiple shallow water habitat projects by the Corps, and gravel spoils left behind from sand dredging, or simiply a combination of all these factors.  This bend will be sampled again, early next spring in the hopes of catching wild pallid sturgeon for broodstock.

Fisheries Tech Lee Erickson gained valuable experience pulling gill nets for the first time.  Lee was able to complete his first “work up” of a pallid sturgeon, under the direction of Fishery Biologists Jeff Finley and Andy Plauck.  Volunteer Erin Salle, a student at University of Missouri at Columbia, was also excited to spend the day working up gill nets, and catching two endangered pallid sturgeon made it even better.

Efforts of the Columbia FRO to further understand this species’ role in large river ecology as well as other ongoing recovery efforts for the endangered pallid sturgeon are in full collaboration with the Native Species goal of the “Fisheries Program Vision for the Future.” 

Lee Erickson, Jeff Finley, Andy Plauck