Sauger can be a rare catch
A recent spell of mild weather had unlocked the ice on the lower Allegheny. We had drifted about a hundred yards downriver of the mouth of Buffalo Creek, near Freeport, when my partner Dave Keith exclaimed, “there’s one.”
A couple minutes later a quality-sized sauger was securely in the net. The measuring board showed it to be 17.75 inches, a quarter-inch shy of the 18-inch requirement for citation-sized sauger in Pennsylvania.
A closely related cousin of the walleye, the sauger, in my experience, can be an enigma of a species. At times they can be ridiculously plentiful and easy to catch; at others, as rare as a play without a yawn.
Sauger are river fish, native to the Ohio River basin, of which the Allegheny is a large contributor. Members of the Percidae family, they are considered the most migratory of the peracids, which probably has a lot to do with their here today, gone tomorrow character.
Other than to reintroduce the species to waters on the rebound, sauger are not stocked in Pennsylvania. Since the species is self-supporting, it is subject to the highs and lows of natural reproduction, the success of which is largely influenced by the conditions during spawning time, March and April around here.
When conditions are good — stable water levels with gradually increasing water temperatures — strong year classes of sauger can occur. The fish grow quickly, often reaching the legal size of 12 inches by autumn of their second year. A price is paid for this rapid growth, though. They don’t live long, typically breaking down physically by their third or fourth year. Most of the sauger caught within Pennsylvania’s share of the Ohio River drainage average 11 to 13 inches or so. Few fish over 15 inches show up, and this is why. Most simply don’t live long enough to attain a longer length.
But more years than not conditions are not great for sauger production, which is typical of river situations. It’s common for year classes to be missing. Perhaps it’s just a bit more evident with sauger, more of a cycle of boom or bust.
Sauger fare better in turbid water, which explains why they do well in the lower reaches of the Allegheny River, as well as the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. The water in these river stretches tends to be off color. In the case of the Allegheny, it’s common for sauger to outnumber walleye from, roughly, the Freeport area on down to the Pittsburgh. Upriver of Freeport, as the water clears, sauger become less numerous. Above East Brady, where the free-flowing portion of the Allegheny starts (and the river is much clearer), sauger are rare, but walleyes flourish.
I’ve read that where both walleye and sauger exist, it’s common to catch sauger in deeper water, given their preference for darker settings. But I’ve not found this to be the case. When sauger populations are strong I’ve taken them right alongside walleyes, from deep water and shallow.
Sauger and walleye cross breed, at times in a natural setting, but much more commonly in a hatchery environment. The saugeye, as the hybrid is called, is an important component of some state’s fish management program. They do well in Ohio reservoirs, which tend to be silty and turbid. Saugeyes were tried in Pennsylvania, but didn’t seem to fare well, with a high degree of escapement from the reservoirs where they were planted. Back in the 1980s and 90s Dave Keith and I caught many saugeyes from the Allegheny, in an around the mouth of the Kiskiminetas River, fish most likely stocked in Loyalhanna Lake originally. Loyalhanna Creek and the Connemaugh River form the Kiskiminetas River in Saltsburg. And the Kiski River is about 27 miles long. So those fish traveled some ways to get to the Allegheny.
Even though sauger don’t attain the size of walleyes, when their numbers are up they provide some great fishing.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.
