What an amazing sturgeon trip! We had a little bit of everything happen. The weather was breezy, much of the time, but the wind always blew from the east (which is down river, so one can still detect most bites) and it was unseasonably warm.
I hooked the first sturgeon and gave Jon (newbie) my rod to reel in the fish. I try to make sure the new anglers get a feel for the power of these fish. Of course, “No good deed goes unpunished.”, and I didn’t hook another sturgeon for almost seven hours, and during that time Jon landed three of his own.
Twice we landed doubles. Jon hooked a sturgeon and we were busy getting the other rods reeled in and tossing the anchor rope, when I grabbed Jon’s second rod to reel it in. Jon had attached a bell on this rod and it didn’t ring. Nothing was happening with his line until I started to reel in and I immediately felt a large sturgeon on the other end. Jon landed his smaller sturgeon and I handed him his other rod to finish reeling in his larger fish. It ended up being the large fish of the trip at 7’10” (approximately 259 pounds and 43 years old).
I had another rod snap on me, this one in two places and on only a 5 ½’ sturgeon. Strange that I have been fishing for sturgeon all of these years and never had a rod snap, until this year, and then to have two of them break.
On one cast Jon had several bites and swung and missed multiple times. After each swing he would reel in the slack and was getting closer to the boat. Eventually, he was fishing straight down and the fish kept biting. He would drop his bait to the bottom again and again and would immediately get another bite. I have never seen anything like that while sturgeon fishing. After doing that a few more times he snagged (yes, snagged in the side) a nice sturgeon. I decided there must be a school of sturgeon under the boat so I dropped my bait straight down and almost immediately caught a sturgeon. We moved the boat back to our tossed anchor and I hooked another one in short order doing the same thing. During the trip we caught around 1/3 of the sturgeon vertically jigging. Catching them that way is tons of fun and I always hope that one doesn’t immediately jump and land on the boat (so far that hasn’t happened).
At times, it may be a couple hours between bites and during that time it can be difficult to always stay awake (we fish from sun up to sun down). Twice, we had to wake one of the anglers to let him know that he had a fish on. One fish was jumping before we got his attention and the second time a sturgeon was trying to bend his rod under the boat. We had a fun time teasing him – all in good fun.
Final count was 42 sturgeon landed and one large one came unhooked before we were able to see it.
Jon landed 17 (I need to quit being such a gracious host).[;)] Another great outing and it was a pleasure to fish for sturgeon with Rob again and I also had fun fishing with Jon.
Hopefully, Rob and Jon will post up some pictures.
