Michigan’s sturgeon season ends in just 17 minutes, setting new record

After just 17 minutes on Black Lake, the 2025 sturgeon season came to an end. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources took the picture.

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    The 2025 Black Lake sturgeon season ended after just 17 minutes.
    
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    The record-setting season beat the previous best time of 25 minutes.
    
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    The state had a quota of six sturgeon on Black Lake but seven fish had been pulled in by 8:18 a.m. on Saturday.
    

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  The 2025 Black Lake sturgeon season ended after just 17 minutes.
  
• 
  The record-setting season beat the previous best time of 25 minutes.
  
• 
  The state had a quota of six sturgeon on Black Lake but seven fish had been pulled in by 8:18 a.m. on Saturday.
  

DETROIT (FOX 2):Nearly 800 fishermen set out to catch a sturgeon at Black Lake at 8 a.m. on Saturday. The season’s limit was reached in just seventeen minutes.

The Black Lake sturgeon season is usually quite short, but this year literally blew the previous record out of the water.

With a quota of only six sturgeon, the season began at 8 a.m. in Black Lake, close to Cheboygan. The season ended at 8:17 a.m. with seven fish hauled in.

It was canceled last year because there wasn’t enough ice on the lake, so this was a return for the season. The incident had never occurred before. However, the icy conditions cooperated this year.

Based on the figures:

In an attempt to catch one, the 797 fisherman who entered for the competition traveled from all across the Great Lakes region.

Data from the seven sturgeon that were captured will be gathered to provide information on the general health of the community. A 62-inch fish with a tag from 2010 was one of the seven, demonstrating the state’s effective efforts to preserve the species.

This year’s time was half that of the previous record, which was set for the sturgeon season at 35 minutes.

The season lasts no more than five days, and the state strictly regulates the annual total of sturgeon that can be captured.

A 240-pound, nearly 7-foot-long sturgeon that was thought to be about 100 years old was removed from the Detroit River four years ago. The fish, according to the Alpena Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office,

The backstory

The others include the St. Mary’s River, Otsego Lake, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River, and the Portage and Torch Lakes.

In Michigan, sturgeon sport fishing is carefully restricted, and commercial sturgeon fishing is completely forbidden. Any sturgeon that is captured in the Detroit River between July and March, when it is legal, has to be released right away.

A keystone fish found in the Great Lakes, lake sturgeon are a rare species in Michigan. The sturgeon population was nearly exterminated decades ago as a result of commercial fishing.

Decades may pass before the species reaches its maximum size. While females can live up to 100 years, the average male longevity is around 55 years.

The Source: The Department of Natural Resources provided FOX 2 with information about the 2025 season on Facebook. For this post, we also drew on material from other articles about the lake sturgeon fishing seasons.