The Never Ending Sturgeon
October 12, 2019
Alex, Marco & John joined me today, hoping for a few sturgeon. After last year’s trip, they wanted more! I was pretty sure we could make it happen, if the NE winds weren’t too bad!
Our run to the area was a little bumpy, but we were going to give it a try. I idled around for quite a while and finally stopped on several fish in hopes of a quick bite. Unfortunately it was anything but that and after 30 minutes of nada, we began the search once again.
The morning was a tough one with multiple moves and nothing to show for our efforts. With each stop, I had to use a drift sock just to keep the boat straight. Thankfully the electric motor held us in position and between the two, we stayed secure.
With the boat bouncing all over, it was difficult to tell if we were even getting bit. At one point, I noticed something slightly different and set into weight. We finally had our first fish on and Alex was the lucky one. He did battle with the sturgeon for about 5 minutes and although not big, it did put up a good fight. We were officially not skunked!
The start of the afternoon wasn’t much better. I was having a hard time finding fish to set up on and made multiple moves just looking for places to fish. By mid-afternoon we finally caught a break when one of the lines was bit. When I set into this fish, I could tell that it had weight!
Next up on the rod was John and he was about to fight the biggest fish of his life! We cleared the other rods to make room for the battle and what a battle it was! His line was beginning to rise and I knew what was going to happen next. I told everyone to look back and this thing breached, showing us just how big it actually was. He was in for a long fight!
Close to 15 minutes had passed and John was still not done. His beast had made so many runs but only jumped once. It eventually tired slightly and he was able to bring her to the surface for me to net. It was definitely a long fish and pretty thick too. The next step was the pic and it was going to get interesting!
I prepped everything and instructed John on how to hold the fish. When he lifted her out of the net, we could see just how big she actually was and it was never ending! We all shot fast and he returned the dinosaur back to where she came from. We watched her on the sonar as she went directly to the bottom, disappearing from the screen.
Next up was Marco and it didn’t take long. Within ten minutes I set into another fish and handed him the rod. It felt big as well and I hoped for a repeat performance! Although this thing never showed itself, the battle was as strong as I had hoped for. It took Marco all over the place and made some really long runs too. Ten minutes later when we finally caught a glimpse of his fish, I netted it and ended the fight. Several pics after, it was released to fight another day!
I didn’t have much time left but wanted to get Alex into a fish as well and reset all the lines. He was the only one without a pic as the one he caught from this morning just wasn’t photo worthy, in my eyes! Unfortunately after almost an hour of no bites, I cleared the rods and packed everything up to go.
Alex may not have caught a big fish today, but they did all have a round of doing battle with some sturgeon. I’m sure that the conditions had something to do with the lack of cooperation from the fish. The giant NE winds have never been easy to fish in and hopefully the next time out, things won’t be as tough. There’s still plenty of time left in the season for more giants and I plan on targeting them as often as I can!
