Snake River Sturgeon 08/05

[Nick1983]

Thought I'd start it off with a fun pic. Too bad Jo is blocking off part of the fish, but you can see its tail behind him. Fished CJ on Sunday 08/05. Met Fishin4days and his brother and we hit the river. The day started a little slow, but it picked up and stayed on for a good while.

First fish was a nice fat, healthy 6'1" typical Snake River beast.


You can see fishin4day touching the fish below the pec fin. Something was funny with the fish. Its like there was a giant air bubble in there. When I put my hand in its mouth to unhook it, it felt like there was a softball at the base of its mouth. Just real hard tissue. Neither issue didn't seem to hurt the fish... more on that later.
After getting back to the anchor, we sat for about 20 minutes, but another fish on!

Not the monster of the day, but still a respectable sturgeon.

He had some line hanging out of his... ahem... butt... so right as Jo was about to clip the line off, this dude decided he wanted nothing to do with that. First time I've seen a sturg go from docile on his back, to full on breach out of the water trying almost pulling Jer into the water, while almost landing in the boat. Pretty amusing. We were just trying to do him a favor haha!

No pictures of the next fish, it wasn't huge, wasn't small. Probably about 5'6" but really healthy.

We get back to the anchor, and within a minute, I didn't even have time to sit down... the rod slams down. Fish on again! I had just reeled one in, and usually there's a rotation, so I handed the rod off. That's the big ol' girl at the start of the post. Such an amazing fish.



By the time we got her reeled in, she was pretty exhausted... we got into a real shallow part of the river, so me and Jo emptied our pockets and jumped in. We made sure she made it safe back into the channel. For a little bit, she seemed content hanging out in the shallow current, but quickly gave us a nice tail splash to say goodbye.

With 4 boated, all by noon, we could have easily called it. But why stop?

Remember that 1st fish where we were talking about the weird lump in its chest area (do fish have chest areas?!?!) and the softball in its mouth? Well... apparently its not detrimental, because we caught him again. Still gave us a 20 minute fight like the first time, and still splashed the boat on his way out. In the pic you can see Jer pointing at its lump... again.

Numero 6. That's the max I've caught in a day. And it usually happens on days where I'm on a time schedule. I've been out with fishin4days 3 or 4 different times where we've boated 6. Its not his personal record, but one of these days (I'm hoping soon here) that'll change.

Good times, tight lines! Beware of the moss...................... Thanks for reading!
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[idahoron]

Outstanding!! I can't wait to get into the big ones in my pontoon. I am about practiced up enough to get-er-done. Ron
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[elkmagnet]

Nice pics and what a day!
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[fish_or_die]

Great story and pics! thanks for posting!
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[flygoddess]

JEALOUSE!!!!!! Those are outstanding, and nice photos of the landing. Something tells me you guys have done this before. Now if I can do it with a fly rod...depth is a factor there.
Keep up the outstanding work Gentlemen.
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