Sturgeon on Rainy River

[revolutionz]

Who else has hooked into one of these pre-historic monsters?

Up at Rainy on Tuesday/Wednesday for some walleye action, and hooked into what I thought was a snag at first....until it started pulling line...lots of line. Chased the thing around for around an hour, and managed to boat it! 65" sturgeon. From what I've read, 5" short of the MN state record of 70". In our excitement, forgot to measure the girth, but the chart on the MN DNR page puts the average weight of a sturgeon this length at 70lb. Caught on 10 or 12lb braid (can't remember exactly what's on the reel) with a 6' 8" St Croix Avid X medium action rod. What a battle, and what an experience. The walleye fishing was pretty good too!

 

[Captain Ahab]

I've caught a few in the 50 inch range. One through the ice. Biggest one we have boated was 63 inches. Usually we just reel down and break the line so we can continue to walleye fish. One year they were so thick we gave the sturgeon a lot of jigs.

 

[revolutionz]

Being my first one, it was pretty cool...can't say I'd go through that battle again though. Doubt I'd ever catch one bigger anyway, I didn't realize how big it was until I started looking around the webz at the size of them.