Cheatham County Exchange
ASHLAND CITY WEATHER

Caney Fork River yields big sturgeon




Bill Newsome with his Caney Fork sturgeon.Chase Corbitt/Main Street Maury

Bill Newsome with his Caney Fork sturgeon.Chase Corbitt/Main Street Maury

Bill Newsome was fishing in the Caney Fork River for stripers one night last week when he hooked a prehistoric monster.

It was a 4 and a half-foot sturgeon, snagged in the tail by Newsome’s lure, and the battle was on.

“It took off down-river, swimming with the current, and at one point it had stripped almost all the 50-pound-test line off my reel,” Newsome says. “I went splashing along after it.”

Finally, after a 10-minute battle, he landed the big fish. Partner Chase Corbitt snapped a photo and it was released, as per Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency regulations.

Newsome, who lives in Possum Town near Lebanon and works at Vanderbilt University Hospital, has been fishing since he was a kid. He is familiar with the Agency’s sturgeon restoration program, including requesting information about inadvertent catches. He phoned in the info the next day, and received a Certificate of Appreciation from the TWRA.

The Caney Fork sturgeon is one of 281,427 released in Tennessee waters by the TWRA since 2000 when the Agency launched its restoration effort.

The hatchery-raised sturgeon were stocked in the French Broad and Holston rivers near Knoxville and in the Cumberland River near Nashville. Sturgeon travel long distances, and the one Newsome caught migrated up the Caney Fork from its conflux with the Cumberland River at Carthage.

Sturgeon are native to Tennessee, but disappeared over a century ago due primarily to poor water quality.

The prehistoric fish can grow over eight feet long, weigh more than 300 pounds and live 150 years. Sturgeon eggs (roe) are valuable when processed into caviar, but in North America the big, hard-fighting fish are caught primarily for sport and released.

The TWRA’s objective is to restore the state’s once-extinct sturgeon and establish a sustainable population for sport fishing. Sturgeon fishing in the northwest is a thriving enterprise.

More and more of the stocked sturgeon are being accidentally caught by anglers. The TWRA asks fishermen who catch one to report it, as Newsome did (615-781-6575) and provide data to assist the Agency in monitoring the fishes’ growth and migration.

Information includes the date and location of the catch, its approximate size, what it was caught on, and a photo if possible. The sturgeon should be released as quickly as possible.

In return for the cooperation, the fisherman receives a TWRA Certificate of Appreciation with a drawing of a lake sturgeon.

“It was an interesting experience,” Newsom says. “We didn’t catch any stripers that night, but the sturgeon livened things up.”

Leave a Reply