Posted on 05/19/2015 4:59:23 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
Taco flavored Doritos
And my orange life vest
Dad caught a hundred pound sturgeon
On twenty-pound test
-- Primus, "Fish On (Fisherman's Chronicles, Part II)"
Yerhart has caught only one sturgeon in his life. But it was the sturgeon of a lifetime.
On Friday night, Yerhart, a 34-year-old truck technician from Brownsdale, Minn., found himself in a Hemingway-esque struggle with a prehistoric monster: a lake sturgeon as long as he is tall, and perhaps twice his age and 10 times the weight for which his rod and reel were designed.
Once nearly wiped out by overfishing (caviar is sturgeon eggs) and habitat alteration from dams, sturgeon have been staging a steady comeback in the Upper Midwest for decades. For the first time this year, Minnesota offers a statewide catch-and-release season for them, and subcultures of anglers target them with heavy tackle on the St. Croix River in the east metro and the Rainy River along the Canadian border.
But they're still a curiosity for most, including Yerhart and his two boatmates, who motored up the Mississippi River north of Winona on Friday morning in search of more traditional quarry: walleye. (Although the statewide walleye opener was Saturday, the season is year-round on that stretch of the Mississippi.) They were aboard a 14-foot Lund owned by buddy Elias Mathias of Austin. The other passenger was Yerhart's uncle, Jim Bennett of Clarks Grove.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
I’ve never caught a Sturgeon but I do know that this is NOT a very big one. They grow much, much bigger than this specimen.
On walleye tackle?
That puny “bottom-sucker” didn’t pull / tow a 14-foot Lund for a mile. The group used the motor(s) to ^follow^ it as it ran. It got tired out and was subsequently landed.
Anyway, this is a good fish story and that guy sure looks happy.
Yup. Its a legitimate fish fighting strategy.
Its what drag is for. To keep pressure on a fish while letting it run and preventing the line from breaking.
Yes, that is a small Sturgeon by just about any standard. When you can see them from 150+ feet above the water near the outflow of a Dam in South Dakota, you know they can get huge!
By my estimation, the Sturgeon I have seen at Dam sites were at least 10 feet long, if not bigger on average.
They can get as big as 20 feet long and ~1800 pounds!
My wife hooked what turned out to be a 20lb flathead catfish on an ultra light spinning reel designed and rigged for Crappie. We were anchored on a pontoon boat. As soon as I realized how big the fish was, I pulled anchor and let him drag us around until he surfaced and I netted him. 20lb fish on 8lb test line. My wife played it very well. Big mistake pulling him in the boat; we got slimed big time before I could get him back in the water.
“The official [Minnesota] state record sturgeon, caught on the Kettle River in 1994, weighed 94 pounds, 4 ounces. It was 70 inches long and had a girth of 26 1/2 inches.”
Bigger sturgeon have been caught in Minnesota, but not under the rules.
There are sturgeon in the northwest US that are twice that big, but I’m not sure they’re the exact same species.
Flathead............That’s good eating.
I would be happy to catch it too, it just seems that all the hoopla is unwarranted considering that, as Sturgeon go, this is really just a juvenile. It is probably equivalent to catching a two or three pound largemouth bass, a lot of fun but no reason to alert the media.
Two years back a buddy was fishing the mouth of the Merrimack in Newburyport, MA. They were fishing for stripers. They hooked up on a sturgeon. It was about this same size, six feet. It took over an hour to land. All the other boats in the area stopped fishing and pulled in their lines. It eventually tired and they got it into the boat just to take pictures like this. When they got it into the boat other boaters were yelling to get it back in the water. Apparently, it is illegal to even land them in Mass because they are so rare. You are supposed to cut the line once you realize what you have on the other end. Therefore, they certainly did not share the pictures with anyone other than friends. These guys have been fishing in the area for 30 years, and never heard of anyone ever catching one before. FYI, the Merrimack flows from the White Mountains of NH south into Mass and into the Atlantic just south of the Mass/NH border.
The all-freshwater lake sturgeon is much smaller. US record is about 240 pounds.
That’s a great catch on light line...
I caught a 9lb 6oz Brown Trout in the Smokies on 2 lb test line with a 24th oz Roostertail...
Fishing had not been very good so we called it a day. We turned the piglets over to a FFA kid and our story made it into 2 local news papers.
Reminds me of the olden days of the 1950s when people would catch alligator gar in the White River in Arkansas.
Once landed they had to shoot them in the head to keep them from thrashing around.
The Fraser River is home to one of the largest populations of sturgeon in the world. For those of you that are not familiar with this species of fish, here are some quick facts:
Length: in excess of 14 feet
Weight: in excess of 1000lbs.
Life span: in excess of 100 years
Average annual growth: a couple of inches
Length of existence: over two hundred million years
caught my first Brown last September a real thrill...3lbs...yours was a grandpappy
There is a TV show about monsters in waterways and the guy who hunts them around the world. IIRC he captured a sturfeon which was eating children!
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