# Shovelnose sturgeon caviar harvest



## Hamilton Reef (Jan 20, 2000)

Note the video and side bar links.

Feeding a taste for luxury
Fish eggs are a delicacy, but getting them to market is rough work

De Soto - Jim and Denny Boardman bring their flat-bottomed boat to rest in the main channel of the Mississippi River and lift, with considerable effort, the mesh-and-metal hoops on which they hang their livelihood.

But the real quarry here is shovelnose sturgeon, an ancient and dwindling species. The female produces black, pearl-like eggs, coveted worldwide as caviar.

The Boardman cousins, 55-year-old Denny and 71-year-old Jim, are third- and fourth-generation commercial fishermen, and among the last five or so in Wisconsin to make a living full time on the Mississippi River.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=607972


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

"There ain't no future in it," says Jim, whose grandfather came down the muddy waters on a houseboat from Lake Pepin in the early 1900s.
Between the declining markets and increasing regulation, Denny sees, maybe, a decade more of work ahead.

"There's nothing there. It's going to go the way of the dodo bird," Denny says. 

Once out of the water, the Boardmans are still at work on this day's catch, which Jim estimates at about 350 pounds of fish, and 7 or 8 pounds of roe from the 19 females they caught.

"I've ate it. It's no big deal," he says, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "It's kind of salty - tastes fishy."



So these guys do this, and can catch and kill 19 spawning fish in a day, and whine that the end of this fishery is in sight? What pathetic slobs. This is akin to the people who hunted carrier pigeons into extinction.


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## UPJerry (Dec 14, 2006)

Funny, I just read a different article about this in yesterday's paper here. That article was about regulations on the shovelnose in Illinois.

As far as eating sturgeon eggs... no thanks.


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