The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has canceled the 2024 Black Lake sturgeon fishing season due to a lack of safe ice on the lake.

The season started at 8 a.m. on Saturday (Feb. 4) and ended at 9:05 a.m. after the allowed number of sturgeon had been caught.

The 2023 lake sturgeon fishing season on Black Lake in Cheboygan County will begin next month.

Firefighters and Michigan DNR are working to contain a 2,500-acre wildfire burning up Montmorency and Cheboygan county.

Firefighters and Michigan DNR are working to contain a 2,300-acre wildfire burning up Montmorency and Cheboygan county.

ONAWAY, Mich. – It took just over two hours for the 2021 public sturgeon spearing season on Black Lake in northern Michigan to end. Lake sturgeon are bottom-feeding fish that often live well past 100 years and grow past lengths of six feet (1.8 meters). Estimates show the lake system’s adult sturgeon population may have nearly doubled over the course of the last several decades, said Dave Borgeson, fisheries biologist and northern Lake Huron unit manager for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The Black Lake chapter of the nonprofit Sturgeon For Tomorrow works to preserve the species, educate the public and assist researchers with hatchery and tagging activities. Officials plan to survey Black Lake’s juvenile sturgeon population in 2023 to compare to data collected in 2013.