BAUDETTE, Minn. – A sturgeon nudged a clump of night crawlers and dead minnows staged on the bottom of the Rainy River, 25 yards away from the American shore.
Scott Ward of Inver Grove Heights resisted the urge to set the hook. Instead, he waited for a member of North America's biggest freshwater fish species to lodge the bait inside its toothless, protruding mouth. Ward lifted his fishing rod out of its holder, felt the sturgeon's considerable weight, kept the line tight and stepped to the rear of his fishing boat for a 15-minute battle.
While sturgeon populations in other parts of the United States have become threatened or endangered, the family of lake sturgeon native to Lake of the Woods and its tributaries in Minnesota and Ontario continues to thrive. Over two days of unguided fishing late last week east of Baudette, three of us caught and released four sturgeon, the largest of which was 4-feet, 4-inches with an estimated weight of 38 pounds. In our midst was a festive group of nearby shore anglers who caught at least 10 more sturgeons, each time shouting out to us the tip-to-tail measurement.
"It's been a really good spring for sturgeon fishing," said Phil Talmadge, area fisheries supervisor in Baudette for the Department of Natural Resources. "For whatever reason, the action's been hot."
For those who still want to partake, sturgeon can be targeted this month through May 15. This Sunday, however, is the last day to harvest one until the season reopens July 1.
Early spring fishing on the Rainy and at its river mouth in Lake of the Woods continues to be a cherished tradition in Minnesota. A relatively new rule now prevents anglers from keeping walleyes, but throngs of visitors continue to ply the border waters starting March 1 of each year, weather permitting. This year, Talmadge said, the biggest turnouts have been for sturgeon. They happened after the April 14 climax to the six-week catch-and-release walleye season.
In our case, the waves were rolling opposite the current when we launched at Frontier Landing in Koochiching County. We anchored in a spot where we had previous success in 2019, downstream from a minor tributary. For our friend David Whitescarver of Golden Valley, the trip was his first sustained escape from a serious, 13-month pandemic lockdown. All three of us were vaccinated before heading north.
The river was glorious. The strong currents and heavy debris we battled in 2019 were gone. Instead, the Rainy flowed gently inside winding banks that were barren of snow but not yet greening. A pair of bald eagles patrolled the water, returning often to a tall perch on the Canadian side. All it took to hold our position was a GPS-guided trolling motor.
