Sturgeon & Eyes
October 15, 2023
I had the pleasure of fishing with Andrew and his family today for sturgeon. Agnieszka and Nicolas were eager to get their first prehistoric looking fish but not as much as Andrew was. With conditions almost perfect, there was no doubt that they would get bit!
After a long run to the starting area, I wasted no time getting the lines in the water in hopes of a quick bite. After about 15 minutes Andrew got to feel the power of these things when he was into a nice fish. It definitely gave him a good fight by ripping line from the reel and he felt the strength of the sturgeon. Although not a giant, it was a good fish and worthy of a few pics before the release.
Nicolas was up next and not long after his father’s fish, he too was into one of his own. Once again, the battle was a good one and Nicolas soon had the fish along side the boat for me to grab. It was about the size of the first one and also returned after a few more pics.
Agnieszka was up next and unfortunately, she only managed to get a juvenile one on her turn. Although cute, it was way smaller than I had hoped for and returned to grow. Andrew had the next one and we had waited quite a while for this bite. It seemed like the fish had just shut down and nothing was feeding where we were. Fortunately, he was tight to another one and it looked like a big one too! Plenty of line went off the reel as he tried to bring the fish to the boat. I had visions of needing the net for this one, but soon saw that it wasn’t required. Another decent fish but not the dinosaur I was searching for!
We had made several adjustments by moving areas throughout the morning, but weren’t able to get any more bites. I was seeing less fish on the bottom and even tried a few other places when the wind switched to a north west. Unfortunately, they too proved to be slow as well and we eventually gave up fishing for sturgeon. A unanimous decision was made, to try for walleye!
The remainder of the trip was spent making multiple drifts over deep flats and several fish were caught. Agnieszka had the hot hand with a couple of overs and some keepers as well. Plenty of fish were missed by everyone but it was Andrew that had the worst luck as nothing seemed to want to stay pinned. He was either missing the bites or just having them come off when hooked. Nicolas was fortunate enough to land a couple of good keeper eyes as well and they left with four nice fish for their dinner tonight.
Andrew and his family had wanted to catch sturgeon and they had all done that today. They had also ended their fishing day with several nice walleye to take home. Plan B definitely came in handy as the sturgeon were in a bit of a funk today, causing us to make a change. It all worked out in the end as they finished with a bang! Overall, it was another great day for fishing!!
