Out on the Lake

Where: Lake Winnebago (currently frozen a couple feet deep and littered with shanties)


What: Sturgeon Spearing
What?: It's a fish.
Huh?!: It's a really big ugly fish.

Cousins Matt Drake, left, and Chuck Krause, right, of Fremont pose for the camera of Randy Bartel of Weyauwega, far left, with their 70-inch sturgeon on opening day of sturgeon spearing on Lake Winnebago off the shores of Waverly Beach in Menasha, Wis., Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008.

How: You sit in a shack, drinking beer if you're so inclined, looking down into a hole in the ice. If you see a sturgeon you throw a five-spiked spear at it. Then you pull it out.

Looking down through the hole in the ice, Mark and Tyler Houg of Menasha tease a passing garfish with their sturgeon decoys while hoping for a sturgeon to pass by.

In the above photo, the orange and green things are the decoys. The whitish X is a PVC-like pipe placed on the bottom of the lake... it provides visual contrast to help the hunters see the dark-colored sturgeon in murky water.

Tim Rochon, right, of Kimberly and his 80-inch, 161-pound sturgeon, garnered lots of attention at the Waverly Beach registration station.