Researchers at Arkansas Tech University are working with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to learn more about the habits of sauger swimming in the Arkansas River.

If you just had a curious look on your face after reading the word “sauger,” you’re probably not alone. The sauger is a cousin of the walleye, which is known for its fantastic flavor. While sauger and walleye have followings as large as crappie and bass angling up North and in the Midwest, they are pursued by a relatively small group of anglers in the southern states they inhabit. The Arkansas River holds the largest population of sauger in the state, but few anglers know much about the species.

“I occasionally get photos from anglers asking what the fish was that a person caught in the river while fishing for crappie and bass,” says Frank Leone, fisheries supervisor at the AGFC’s Russellville regional office. “Most of the time, people will ask if it’s a snakehead, and I have to explain to them that it’s not only a native fish, but a good one at that.”

The comparison may be a fair assessment to people who have seen neither but only heard descriptions of the invasive snakehead. Both have a mottled brown and bronze coloration and both have teeth, but that’s where the similarity stops. Sauger are much more streamlined than snakeheads, have peg-like teeth instead of the snakehead’s sharper triangular teeth.

Short Fishing Season

Perhaps the reason for the lack of the species’ popularity comes from the relatively short window when anglers are truly able to pursue them. Each winter, sauger move upstream in the Arkansas River to find rocky, shallow areas to spawn. The many dams along the river that keep navigation open for commercial and recreational traffic hinder their progress, forcing most to congregate and spawn along the rocks just below each lock and dam.

Sauger in the Arkansas River have such secretive habits and locations that biologists and anglers don't know much about them. A new research study hopes to shed light on these unique fish. (Photo: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission)

Grizzled, old-school anglers have learned this pattern. They will walk to these riprap-covered areas to cast crappie jigs, minnows and other offerings when the current is right to collect some sauger for a midwinter fish fry. But outside of the spawning cycle, no one really knows what happens to these mysterious fish on the Arkansas River.

That’s where Arkansas Tech Graduate Student Peter Leonard comes in. He has been working under John Jackson, Ph.D, head of the Department of Biological Sciences and professor of Fisheries Science at Arkansas Tech University to track Arkansas River sauger throughout the seasons to learn more about the species. Leonard has worked with Leone on two studies concerning the species to help fill in the voids regarding the species’ use of habitat throughout the year and angling effort directed at sauger.

“The exploitation study was conducted using tags on fish collected during the spawning run of 2017,” Leonard said. “We caught sauger when they were concentrated, placed reward tags on the fish and released them. Anglers who caught the fish later could call the phone number on the tag and receive a cash prize for their catch.”

Leone says tag/recapture studies are used fairly often in fisheries work to determine how many fish anglers catch and keep from a population.

“If you have a certain amount of tags on fish, and anglers turn in a certain percentage, then you can use that to figure the rate of fish being caught,” Leone said. “While they are on the phone, we ask a few questions about where it was caught, if they kept the fish and if they were targeting that species, in particular, to give us a better picture of what’s going on out on the water.”

According to Leonard, 340 tagged fish were released below the dam that separates Lake Dardanelle and Pool 9 of the Arkansas River and below Ozark dam at the upper end of Lake Dardanelle early last spring. 

“We have had very few tag returns so far, telling us that the exploitation rate for sauger last year was very low,” Leonard said. 

Leone added that although the last two years saw high flows that could have disrupted angling effort, the results of the tag returns reinforce much of the anecdotal evidence he has had over the years that recreational fishing pressure has very little impact on sauger populations in the river.

“Flow rates are just something you have to deal with any time you study an aspect of a river fishery,” Leone said. “It’s part of the natural world, so you have to be prepared for events that are outside of your control.”

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Source: Arkansas Game and Fish Commission