Sturgeon & Catfish Galore

After yesterdays outing with Christiane for sturgeon & catfish, I just had to return again. This time I had Guillaume and a colleague of his from work. His co worker also brought his father for some unbelievable fishing. We set up in the area and I prepared the rods one at a time, getting the lines in the water as I proceeded. Well, it took a while to get the third one in because I had to keep re baiting the first and second rod with all the fish that they were catching. When I finally managed to get all the rods rigged, it seemed like I was going through a constant rotation afterwards. As soon as I would re bait the rod that landed a fish, another one would get bit. In fact at times, we had several doubles and even one triple header. This went on all morning long and we probably would have stayed even longer but the flotilla of cruisers just got too insane. Despite the lack of wind, there were waves from every direction making it next to impossible to see any hits. This place had seen loads of sturgeon and some pretty big catfish, but the one thing that was a surprise, was the striper we caught. I had heard that there were sightings of these things in the lower river but had never seen any of them above. I can’t wait to see what the future brings! With the sunshine & heat officially unbearable, I was left with no choice but to raise the roof. What a difference that thing makes! We trolled a few areas looking for pike & walleye but had a tough time getting into them as I usually had. I’m not sure if it was because of all the mayflies that had hatched recently but something was off. We did manage to get several fish but not the numbers I had become accustomed to in the past. Unfortunately only one of the three walleye landed was of legal length, and the two larger ones were returned. Eventually the other one was also released as there wouldn’t be enough for all of them to eat. In a last ditch effort. I pulled the plug on the troll and decided to try a little drop shotting. In the last hour or so, there were a few more fish caught but these were smallies and also released. By 4:00 we called it a day and ventured back to the take out. They had all caught pounds of big fish today and the heat had them spent. I too was glad to be getting off the water as the number of pleasure crafts out there was absolutely insane. The insanity carried over to the fishing as well as the sturgeon and catfish they had caught today was more than anyone had hoped for!!