Here at RichmondOutside we’re always pushing to make our site and the service we offer a little better. Whether it’s content, new offerings or partnerships with like-minded RVA businesses and non-profits, we figure if we’re standing still, we sure as heck aren’t moving forward. And if we’re not moving forward, someone is sure to be gaining on us (If you don’t like those clichés, click here, generate your own and email it to us!).

The motorized boat landing at the Henrico Co. park.

To that end, in early 2014 we’ll be adding new featured columnists, including Sports Backers’ bike/ped advocate Max Hepp-Buchanan, as well announcing a couple of exciting new partnerships.

But we’re also still working on the nuts and bolts. Take a look, for instance, at our Destinations page. Ryan and I recently went out to Osborne Landing to take pictures, so we could add the Henrico County park on the tidal James to our list (That brings our compendium of parks to 40 and growing.). On the Osborne page, we’ve got a text description, a Terrain360.com park tour, our sweet map layered with all the park features, and all the other information you could want to know before making a trip there. Or at least we hope we have. That’s where we need you, the RichmondOutside.com readers. If you see something missing at Osborne, or any other Destination, shoot me an email (andy@richmondoutside.com). Or maybe there’s a park near you that we haven’t featured. Send us an email and tell us why we should. We’d like to have some laurels to rest on, but until we do — until we earn them — we plan to keep making this site better.

By now the Atlantic sturgeon that made their way up the James River for their fall spawning run have turned around and headed back out toward the ocean. In the past, this is where our knowledge of their whereabouts would end. Researchers knew they went north, generally, but where, exactly? And how quickly? At what depth? Where did they stop along the way?

For the first time, however, some of those questions could be answered.

Matt Balazik returning a sturgeon to the James near Hopewell in October.

Back in September, VCU researcher Matt Balazik chose three male sturgeons that he netted in the tidal James and inserted satellite “B-WET” tags under their dorsal scutes. (B-WET stands for NOAA’s Bay Watershed Education and Training program. That’s where these tiny, titanium tags came from.)

“This is kind of a first…in 2003 they did a couple in the Hudson River,” he said. “But no one has done it since then (with adult fish) and with the more recent technology. They did some juveniles up in Canada…and they were only designed to stay on for a couple months.”

Balazik explained that the tags are programmed to pop off at a certain date (Aug. 11) or if certain conditions occur: “If the fish stays at a certain depth for a week straight, it’ll think that the fish is dead. It’ll corrode and release. If it goes over a depth of 3,000 meters, it’ll ping off and release.”

Sadly, for one five-foot-long male, that’s exactly what happened recently. Balazik was hoping not to have to retrieve a tag so soon, but on November 13 he and VCU professor Anne Wright found one on the beach next to the Lynnhaven Pier. It had been on the fish for about a month. The tag popped off automatically when the fish stayed at the same depth (give or take, considering tidal variations) for over a week.

“We have beautiful data in the river, then it’s out in the ocean and everything is going well,” Balazik said. “It goes from moving all over the place to doing a slow up and down… I fear it was a ship strike.”

So, now two males are left with tags in them. Every 10 minutes or so, the tag collects data on depth, water temperature and location, and stores it in a tiny memory card. But Balazik can’t collect that data until the tag surfaces and can transmit to the satellite — hopefully when it’s scheduled to on Aug. 11.

Credit: VCU

“That’s why it’s so nerve wracking,” he said. “You just have to sit here and wait either until something bad happens and the tag pops off prematurely, or you wait until you get some emails from the satellite on Aug. 11.”

In the meantime, Balazik imagines the kind of answers these tags will provide researchers for the first time.

“I want to know where it goes over winter…I want to know, (when) it comes back to the (James), it if all of a sudden, if its way up in Maine, is it like, ‘Oh crap, it’s time for me to go spawn,’ and makes a huge bolt down in like a week or so. Or does it meander down and just turn in.”

A 100-pound sturgeon in the boat. Credit: Hopewell News

Here’s an awesome piece by Blake Belden in the Hopewell News about a sturgeon that jumped into a fishing boat on the Appomattox River back at the end of October. One quibble: This paragraph wasn’t quite true.

“After calling the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Barker said that, although he frequently witnesses sturgeons jumping out of the water on the river, he was told this was the first time there was any official documentation of one landing in someone’s boat.”

I wrote a column in the T-D about the exact same phenomenon in the fall of 2007. I imagine, with sturgeon numbers increasing in the James, this could become a more common occurrence.

The Presquile ferry crossing.

How often do you get the chance to see a Federally endangered species up close, take pictures, touch it? I got that chance last week on one of those October days that defy the calendar and break warm and humid like midsummer.

I joined VCU researcher Matt Balazik and Chuck Frederickson and Jamie Brunkow, James River Association Riverkeepers past and present, on a sturgeon run on the James River near Presquile National Wildlife Refuge. When I stepped aboard near the Presquile ferry, there were already five on board, all males. Frederickson drove while Matt and Jamie worked up the fish, taking measurements and samples for DNA testing. If any had been females, they would have had electronic tags inserted to allow their location to be monitored.

Sturgeon are bony-plated bottom feeders that pre-date dinosuars. The Atlantic species was federally listed as endangered last year, but on the James they are recovering. Balazik and others are trying to find out how and why. If bald eagles have become the emblem of the James River’s new found fecundity, the sturgeon is the new kid on the block, and no less charismatic for living in the water rather than flying above it.

Balazik about to return a sturgeon to James.

Credit: VCU

Great stuff from Rex Springston in today’s T-D about sturgeon congregating around the Mayo Bridge. Maybe you remember last year when this happened? Rex and I wrote about it, and lots of people went down there to look for them. Well, it’s that time of year again. The water is quite as clear and low as in 2012, but it’s still worth a shot if you have the time. This is like Richmond’s version of Sea World, only less staged and with dinosaurs!

Caleb Newton with his record snakehead.

Last month I took a trip up to Stafford County to go bowfishing for snakeheads on Aquia Creek where it enters the tidal Potomac. The guys who and took me out, Mike Brookover and Matt Wroe, have been hunting snakeheads in that are since the invasive species showed up there about 3-4 years ago.  They showed me and my photographer friend Lance Rosenfield a great time, although we didn’t arrow any snakeheads that night. They also told us about a recent hook-and-line snakehead catch that was a pending world record. Well, now that pending record has become an official one. From the Outdoor News Hub:

Virginia angler Caleb Newton’s June catch has now been confirmed by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) as a hook-and-line world record. Newton, 27, caught a massive 17-pound, six-ounce snakehead over two months ago in Aquia Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River. The angler used a crank bait with a 15-pound line and light rod to bring the beast in. It only took Newton about a minute.

What’s amazing about the snakeheads in Aquia Creek, Brookover told us, is that the very same day Newton made his catch, a bowfisherman arrowed an even bigger snakehead. But the IGFA only recognizes records for fish caught on traditional tackle.

Credit: Lance Rosenfield

There wasn’t room for a picture or two with my column in today’s Times-Dispatch, but I’ve got a bunch of good one’s so I thought I’d share them here.

The spotlight finds a longnose gar in Austin Run. Credit: Lance Rosenfield

On Thursday night I met a photographer friend, Lance Rosenfield, at the Hope Springs Marina in Stafford Co. on Aquia Creek. Until about a month ago, this tributary of the Potomac River was known as a great place to fish for largemouth bass. Then, earlier in June, an angler in a bass tournament hooked a (pending) world record snakehead fish — 17 pounds, 6 ounces. But that same night a youngster named Cody Dent, out bowfishing in a separate tournament, arrowed a snakehead well over 18 pounds. The International Game Fish Association doesn’t recognize fish not caught with a hook and line, but, needless to say, this was still a noteworthy catch. And by the way, he was bowfishing. I’d seen plenty of videos of people bowfishing on lakes and rivers in the Midwest, by I had no idea people bowfished in Virginia.

Mike Brookover, left, and Matt Wroe, bowfish on Aquia Creek. Credit: Lance Rosenfield

It turns out, there’s a mini bowfishing boom going on there in the Aquia Creek area, fed largely by the explosive population growth of the invasive snakehead. Lance and I met Mike Brookover, the godfather of Aquia Creek bowfishing, and his friend Matt Wroe to get a sense for what bowfishing for snakeheads in the home of the world record “Frankenfish” is like. Click here for the link to my column.

Here’s a last-minute opportunity for free family fun this weekend.

The City of Richmond Parks Department’s Free Family Fishing Fair will be held as planned tomorrow (June 1) from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Byrd Park’s Shield’s Lake, and experts will be on hand to teach basic freshwater catch and release fishing. Those younger than age 15 will not need a fishing license to participate, however, anyone age 16 or older will need a license to fish.

In Sunday’s Times-Dispatch I wrote about the fish and the fisherman pictured with this blog entry. Click here for the story. If you need a little prodding, there’s this: That giant striped bass was caught in Richmond city limits.

Steve Knox with his James River striper

And the story gets better. I spoke with Gary Martel, one of the top fisheries biologists at the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and he cleared up some confusion I had with the fish when I wrote the story. The angler, Steve Knox, thought the fish, which he weighed on his boat at somewhere between 74-75 pounds, wouldn’t count as a state record striped bass (the current record is 74 pounds). He was right, but not because of where he caught it. Regulations state that when Virginia’s trophy striped bass season begins on May 1, anglers may keep one fish larger than 32 inches outside of the spawning reaches of the Chesapeake Bay’s tributary rivers. For the James, Martel explained, the upstream end of the spawning area is City Point in Hopewell.

Since Knox caught his fish near Rocketts Landing, he was outside of the spawning reach and could have kept the fish. That also means he could have gone through the process to have it certified as a state record — having it weighed at a certified location, witnessed by specific officials, taken certain measurements, etc. — if, and here’s the rub, he had caught it one day later. Knox caught his fish on April 30th, and the Trophy striper season began on May 1st.

It boils down to this: If Knox had caught his fish one day later, he would be the owner of the Virginia record striped bass.