It’s not every day that you see a 6-foot long fish in Fall Creek in downtown Ithaca.
Earlier this month, several lake sturgeon, ranging in size from 3 to 6 feet, were spotted in the creek congregating near the bridge on Lake Avenue. Emily Zollweg- Horan, a fisheries biologist from the state Department of Conservation checked it out and confirmed they were spawning – the first time that behavior has been witnessed in a Cayuga Lake tributary.
“They were exhibiting spawning behavior. The female fish would drop its eggs and several males would then swim around and near her,”” said Lisa Holst, the DEC’s rare fish leader for the department’s Bureau of Fisheries.
The spawning sightings lasted for a little more than a week. Jeremy Dietrich a Cornell student and member of the New York Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, was able to take videos of the fish and posted them on Youtube.
