The Anniversary Gift

Cristina & Shawn had an absolutely perfect day on the water today, catching all kinds of fish. The weather couldn’t have been better with cool morning air followed by warm temps throughout the afternoon. Little to no wind made it easy to anchor for the big sturgeon as well. It took a while to get the first bite, but it was well worth the wait. Shawn battled a nice average giant for almost 10 minutes before we were able to get it in the net. Several pics later, we returned her to the water to fight another day. I had planned on getting them both at least one fish and switching to walleye & bass by afternoon, but this never occurred. After a relocation, we started getting into more bites and Cristina got the next rod when it was bit. She was into one slightly smaller than Shawn’s first one, but just as strong! It took her about 5 minutes to get it boat side for me to net and now we had two. She was in her early stages of pregnancy and I was glad to see that the fish wasn’t too big for her to handle. Shawn held it up for her pics as we weren’t taking any chances! Right about the time things were settling back to normal, the rods began bouncing. There must have been a bunch of fish down there hitting the lines, because we had plenty of false strikes. One of them however was the real deal and Shawn was back locked with a beast. This one was heavy and pissed off! It made several long runs and each time Shawn brought it in, it went straight back out again. After about ten minutes of fighting the monster, we finally got a glimpse as she came up. Definitely one of the large ones! Throughout the entire battle, Cristina was doing a live feed on Facebook. Apparently a lot of people were watching as her phone was pinging like crazy when it was done. I knew by how much trouble I had to lift the fish into the boat that Shawn was about to have even more. He had to bear hug this beast in order to be able to hold it for the pics. Once done, it bolted right to the bottom when he torpedoed it back into the water. Instead of pulling out of here, I decided to hang in with all the fish we were seeing in hopes of even bigger. Cristina & Shawn had no problem with this as I had the top up and everyone was comfortable in the shade. It had gotten pretty warm and without any wind, downright summer like! I reset the lines and soon after we were back hooking more fish. The balance of the day saw many more sturgeon coming aboard as well as a couple of exotic species. Cristina managed to land a big drum and a channel cat to add to her sturgeon giving her a great slam. One of her sturgeon proved to be a monster as well as it tended to grow during the fight. What I had thought was small ended up being a monster when we finally got it in the net. She did a great job battling it and especially in her condition. Shawn definitely had to hold this one for her during the pics and I believe it was also live on Facebook throughout the entire fight. I made a couple more moves before we were to leave and managed to get Shawn into one more big fish. Throughout the day with all the fish we had, not one jumped. I had found it strange but on this last fish, we finally saw one jump. Now we knew what he had to deal with and it was another large! It may not have been the biggest one of the day but it definitely gave him the best fight. This one took over ten minutes to land and really put him through the grind. This is how you end a day! We packed up afterwards and made our way back to the ramp. We were going to top off the day with dinner at a local restaurant in celebration of their 2nd anniversary. I don’t think we could have planned this day any better and for a change, Mother Nature shined! I guess moms stick together sometime!