Sturgeon Fishing 101
October 27, 2017
Christian wanted to learn about catching sturgeon and today we made it happen. The conditions were good enough to be able to fish them comfortably, unlike recent days! I picked them up at 8:30 at a ramp on the south shore, allowing them to avoid all the traffic they would have had by meeting me. Cristele and Christian would have a short day but I was sure it would be productive!
The waters were deserted today with the exception of a couple of freighters moving cargo. I idled around for a little longer than usual trying to locate what I wanted and unfortunately had to settle on the best of the worst. We made a couple of moves before we even had a bite and finally locked up on the first fish. It didn’t feel too big but I’ve seen that change many times before! While passing the rod to Cristele, the fish came unpinned and our shot at removing the skunk didn’t happen! One more move had us locked up though and Cristele battled her first ever sturgeon to the boat. Although it wasn’t the one I was looking for, it was still good enough for a few pics before being released!
Christian was up next and another move had us marking the most fish we had seen all morning. I knew we were going to bit soon and right on cue, one of the rods started to bounce. I reared back and it definitely felt much heavier than the previous two before! He was finally going to feel the power of these fish and he battled it for over 5 minutes. Multiple runs but no jumps were made as he muscled it to the boat relatively quick. It would have taken most people longer to fight this fish but he really put the boots to it! I netted his catch and many pics were taken by multiple cameras before the release. Things were finally beginning to look up and we held in this area expecting more.
About 15 minutes or so later, with rods in hand, Christian set into another good fish and passed the rod to his girlfriend to fight. She too muscled the fish in quicker than most and in less than 5 minutes, she was holding it for more pics. We were finally on active fish and getting bit more frequently now. No reason to relocate anytime soon!
With limited time in their schedule, we only fished until 3:00 before we had to leave. Although there were several more fish landed, none of them were giants as I had hoped. Still satisfied, we pulled the plug mid afternoon and I returned them to the dock so they could pick up their kids from school. In less than 5 hours they had battled several good fish and Christian now had a much better understanding of what to do on his own. The only drawback to all of this is that he will have to equip himself with more fishing tackle. Oh well, nothing wrong with that I guess!
I decided afterwards with time remaining in the day to see if I could catch a few walleye for dinner. I ran to an open water area that I hadn’t fished in a couple of weeks and although I wasn’t seeing much, decided to give it a try. It didn’t take long to realize that there were still fish here as I brought the first one to net. A nice small keeper went into the livewell and I dropped back for more. In a little over an hour of fishing, I managed to catch almost ten walleye with some of them being overs. Along with the Walters, there were also northerns, bass & perch. I must have boated close to 20 fish in the little time I had. We were definitely having fish for dinner!
Today was quite productive on every level. Christian & Cristele had caught their first sturgeon and learned the techniques required to do it again. I had fished for a short period of time and managed to get “Catch of The Day” for dinner! It was definitely a win, win kind of day. Everyone went home satisfied!
