Urgin' For Sturgeon

I don't like to pay for "seafood."  Fish and the like are expensive, and, as often as not, they are harvested in an unsustainable manner.  I have a problem... I like to eat fish.  The clear solution is to harvest fish in sport fisheries within the bounds of the rules, limits, and regulations.  Over the last few years, I have become increasingly focused on harvest when I fish.  Fish taste good, they are good for you, and they are especially satisfying to body and mind when collected on one's own.  I like to harvest perch, mountain whitefish, rainbow trout (including steelhead), smallmouth bass, bluegills, catfish, burbot, and just about any other teleost with tasty muscles.

There are two kinds of sportfish I like to fish for that I do not like to harvest: 1. cutthroat trout (preference only applies to their native waters), and 2. white sturgeon.  Let's not delve into my preoccupation with catch and release cutthroat fishing, let's save it for another day.  Where I fish for white sturgeon, no harvest is allowed, and with good reason.  Sturgeon species, as a group, are generally long lived (up to and over 100 years), slow growing, and they mature late in life (20 years old before they spawn), which makes them the opposite of a good candidate for a sustainable harvest fishery.  There are rivers and reaches where sport harvest of sturgeon is allowed, and sturgeon are delicious, but I am just not sure I could do it... take a club to a fish that might be as old as me.  They may grow slow, but they grow long.  White sturgeon have the distinction of being North America's largest freshwater fish, and rank among the largest freshwater fish in the world.

In the Hell's Canyon reach of the Snake River Idaho/Oregon/Washington, it is rumored that there are still white sturgeon pushing 12 feet in length.  I have personally seen fish approaching nine feet, and they are as amazing as you would expect for a fish weighing well over 300 pounds.

I always described catching my first sturgeon, which was about five feet long, as a religious experience.  Why  religious?  Because the first time you feel a good one, you are in awe of the power of the fish.  I have hooked, landed, and lost many big rainbow trout.  Yes, they are fun.  Yes, they are fast and they jump and they run and they thrash about, but sturgeon pull really, really hard.  When a big sturgeon wants to run, you might have to follow him, in a boat.  My pop once had a big sturgeon tow our raft upstream in a river, with three adults in the boat.  Sturgeon are also beautiful.  Their sides are lined with scutes like plates of armor and their their backs have bony spikes.  Their tail has the same shape as a shark, and their big fins are perfectly proportioned to their elongated and muscular bodies.  They look (and are) simply prehistoric.  The best part, however is the feeling of the fish from their smooth snout covered in beautifully intricate sensory organs to their leathery fins.

In short sturgeon are just really cool animals, and you have to catch one to experience just how cool they are.  It is really fun to release a big one, knowing that your grandfather could have caught that fish when he was a young man.  It is fun to catch a little one, knowing your granddaughter might catch that fish some day as a grown woman.

Enjoy this video of my pop landing a five footer on a recent outing.  Sorry about the wayward finger halfway through... videography is only a hobby.