Another Big First
August 28, 2021
Peter & Barry headed out with me this morning for a half day trip. We were going to start with sturgeon and see if one or two would cooperate. Afterwards I wanted to take them for deep water bass & walleye and hopefully complete the slam. With any luck, they would both have one!
The conditions changed overnight and a cold front moved in. The winds were out of the north and waves were 1 to 2 foot in height. I wasn’t sure what we were in store for but I wasn’t changing the game plan. As long as I could anchor, we were going to begin with the beasts!
I idled around and found an area holding some big marks. Time to get down to business! With 3 lines in, I was sure we wouldn’t have to wait long for our first bite. Unfortunately it was from a perch and they were just relentless. I had to move 5 or 6 times due to these pesky nibblers and even boated a couple of the culprits! Eventually I saw a real bite and set into a small fish. It turned out to be a juvenile sturgeon and Barry reeled it in. It was his first ever sturgeon and a few pics were taken of his catch.
We had been set back up for over ten minutes without being harassed by the nibblers when I saw one of the rods bounce. I wasn’t sure if it was just from the waves but grabbed it in case. I felt the bounce again and reared back into some serious weight. This was the one I was looking for and Richard was passed the rod. I immediately began clearing the area for him to do battle and saw his line starting to rise. I told them both to look behind the boat and we all witnessed the monster take to the air. To say they were in awe would have an understatement!
I was coaching Richard on what to do after removing a bunch of things when the fish came up and breached once again. The second jump showed its actual size and I knew this was going to be a long fight! Plenty of runs and bull dogging under the boat and another leap was made. Then the fish began to fight! It took out almost 100 feet of line on one run and all Richard could do was watch the spool unwind. The raw power of these sturgeon never cease to amaze me! Although Richard managed to get it back to the boat, the fish remained on the bottom. He had to do the sturgeon shuffle several times as the fish kept going from one side to the other. He was able to bring it up near the surface once and I actually thought I was going to get a shot at it with the net. Nope, it decided to take another 60 feet of line out and right back to the bottom she went!
Richard had been battling this monster for about 15 minutes and finally reeled it back up near the surface. I guided him to what to do and readied the net as he pulled it closer to the boat. Right as I was about to dig down into the water the fish decided to do another leap and went straight into the big bowl of the net. That was the easiest fish I have ever netted! Why can’t they all cooperate like that? This fish looked so big in the net that I decided to lay out the tarp for its protection. Minutes later I was heaving it into the boat and shortly after, Richard held it for several pics. He torpedoed it back immediately after and we watched on the sonar as she went straight to the bottom. Perfect release!
Now they had both landed their first sturgeon and wanted to change to something smaller. I packed everything up and readied the rods for bass & walleye. We didn’t have to go far and I had them fishing with a drop shot rig in deep water. There were fish marking and soon after, they both hooked up. Too bad they also both lost their fish!
I decided to do a long drift along an edge and several more fish were hooked and also lost. It was getting sad not seeing either of them boat any of the ones they had on their lines! Fortunately this all changed when both of them landed their first smallie. As we drifted along, they began to keep most of their fish pinned and the numbers began to climb. At least until the next double header when Barry couldn’t control his fish! It went under the boat and jumped right in the backwash and came unpinned. To make matters worse, he snagged the line in the big engine when he got off!
We kept covering water and several more bass came aboard before we ran out of time. I almost wish that this was a full day as these fish were really biting where we were fishing. Oh well, next time perhaps! In the end, they both managed to land their first ever sturgeon and Richard‘s was a beast! I don’t think he ever thought that he would be catching anything that size this close to where he lives. This was definitely a great day for fishing, times two!!
