Never Give Up
October 7, 2018
October 6th 2018
Iris and a couple of her co workers, Mike & Logan , were looking to catch some sturgeon today. The conditions weren’t the best to make it happen, but I had fished in worse. Winds were suppose to be out of the NE but as it turned out, they were blowing 15 to 20 knots from the east. Anchoring would definitely be a challenge today!
The run out to where we were fishing wasn’t very nice either, in three foot rollers! I had to be careful not to bury the nose of the boat as we were going with the wind and waves. We eventually reached the area and it didn’t seem too bad. After idling around for a while I dropped anchor and tried to set up. To my surprise, the wind was actually pushing the boat upstream, twisting us all around. This was going to be a two drift sock day!
Once we were finally set up I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to correct the angle perfectly and settled on fishing from one side. It was also going to be impossible to detect the bites with the rods in the holders so everyone was forced to fish with rod in hand. Even holding the rods wasn’t easy and several times when I checked their lines I saw that they had been bit by small fish.
We had been at this for a while now and had nothing to show for our efforts until Mike lifted up on something. It was a fish but nothing of any size as he reeled it to the boat. I was actually surprised to see that he had his very first sturgeon and not some junk fish! I normally wouldn’t have taken pics of something this small but shot a few regardless as he had never caught one before. The scoots were razor sharp as they usually are on juveniles and I warned him to be careful when holding it.
With lines back in, we waited again in anticipation of a big bite but it never came. Mike did however manage to land another small sturgeon almost equal in size to his first one and we were still happy to see it come aboard!
I made several moves throughout the day and each time the gusting winds caused the boat to change angles when we anchored. Although we were able to hold, it never seemed like we were positioned correctly and where I wanted to be. A couple of the areas saw good concentrations of fish below the boat, but not a nibble was had. I even thought of just changing fish species to salvage the day but really wanted to hook them up with a beast and decided to stay. We were all in!
With time running out, I hadn’t lost hope quite yet. Someone was going to have to pull a “Hail Mary” as we were down to the last 15 minutes in the day. As luck would have it, Logan felt something different on his rod and set into some weight. He had actually hooked into the real deal and lines were cleared in order for him to fight his fish.
My only concern through the battle was the anchor line. These fish like to get right under the boat during the battle and always try to go from one side to the other. I stayed on the rope and kept it straight down just in case! Logan was now feeling the power of these things as it took multiple runs, peeling line from the reel. As fast as he would gain the line back, it would go again! I think he had the fish at 40 feet 3 or 4 times and each time it ran out at least double that. This fight was all about strength and the fish was trying to wear Logan down! Despite not jumping, there were several times when it looked like it might happen. Each time however, the fish just took off and ran out more line again. After about ten minutes, Logan was finally able to bring his sturgeon to the surface and everyone was amazed at the overall size. It was definitely quality but I had thought it was much heavier by the way it fought! I slid the net under the fish and it was done. Or at least the easy part!
After resting for a couple of minutes in the net, I readied Logan for the pics and showed him how to hold his fish. This was going to be the painful part! As he was holding it, he realized its actual weight after about 30 seconds when the burn began. We tried to shoot fast but every second longer, the fish got heavier and he soon had to toss it back. Good job it wasn’t a real giant!
This day couldn’t have ended better with Logan landing his fish. We had endured all kinds of crap throughout the day and they definitely deserved to be rewarded. It was cold and miserable and for about an hour or so we had also been rained on. This group was dedicated! I only wish that I could have gotten everyone into fish but in the end, was thrilled just to have gotten one big one. This was the perfect way to end the day! Logan was finally able to get a picture, holding a sturgeon, unlike his last outing where the guide just released his catch! He now had an even better memory and photos to prove it too! This was a well deserved ending to a very difficult day. Never give up!!
