MONSTER birthday sturgeon!

Well with all the "talk" about huge sturgeon being caught on the Fraser River lately, I thought I'd share a cool story with everybody that follows our blogs rather send the story and pics into the paper! The day started out as usual, meeting my guest Steve and his wife Joe for the first time at the hotel. They seemed excited with all the recent news of big fish being caught on the Fraser! The usual comments were thrown around on the drive to the launch like, " I want a big fish"! I responded as usual with my "be careful what you wish for"! I also used my usual, "lets try and get one bigger than you" line, but the problem was that he was 6 foot something and pushing 300 lbs!   Steve was no stranger to fishing, and had landed catfish to 150 lbs so I had my work cut out for me. It also happened to be his birthday, so it was doubly important to find him a good one ;)  I explained that the average fish we catch is in the 3-5 foot range but this time of year can produce BIG fish. Arriving at the first drop we ran into a dozen seals soaking up whatever heat they could on a boom of logs. Wasn't too long and Steve was into his first fish. Just under 5 feet, Steve commented on how well it fought and I joked, "so can you imagine how a big one will fight!" The next few bites took place while Steve has his back turned or doing something else resulting in a few late swings and clean misses. Shortly after lunch we got a great bite, and this time he saw it and struck like he meant it!! Next thing you know this giant creature comes flying out of the water shaking it's head trying lose the hook! Steve kept his cool, and it jumped again! Now if you've never seen a fish this big jump, it's crazy! I looked at Steve and said that I only saw 3/4 of it and there was 8 feet!! Luckily I had a guy on board that can fish, but even with his size and strength we had trouble getting it close to the boat! After 45 minutes we managed to pull it along side the boat, only to have it jump again and peel of half a spool of line! Towards the end even a guy as experienced as Steve, was brought to his knees exhausted, dripping with sweat, and shaking in pain, but he DID IT! Nice work buddy! This is the biggest fish one of my clients has caught this season, and the 3rd largest one any client has landed on my boat in over 15 years of guiding for sturgeon! She inhaled the piece of lamprey eel so deep we could barley get to the hook, but did safely.  She measured in at 3 meters to the fork of the tail, well over 11 feet overall and had a girth of 58 inches that carried all the way back to the anal fins, super fat! While there is no actual way to get weights on these monsters, if you were to poll all the guides out there, you'd get answers ranging from 550-900lbs so? I'll just say it was huge. You may find it interesting to know that she had been previously tagged in the Fraser River Sturgeon Society's, monitoring and assessment program! Check out some pics of her below, I wish I had got better photos, but you can only do so much with a couple guys. To put it into perspective the picture beside my 17 foot boat shows just how long it really is, and knowing that Steve is a BIG dude you can realize the girth and weight she had! 

Great job Steve, and happy birthday!