Sturgeon Excursion 2007 Report

[Tim_Anderson]

iffwalleyes,

As soon as the river opens in the spring, the walleye season is open and they are fair game (mostly catch and release only) until April 14th. Every year seems to be different, and 2007 was no exception. There are many variables...usually cold and mud that hold us up or screw things up, so.... often there's a very short window for fishing but it's always well worth it. Best opportunity for multiple hogs and good numbers that I know of around here.

Best thing I can tell you is to start watching the Rainy River area of this website around early to mid march next spring.

[iffwalleyes]

I know I was just being a smart a$$ towards Hanson the Catfisherman .

[CatManLee]

I fished the river between the boat landing at Wheelers Point and 4 mile bay on Saturday. I Fished by myself and ended the day with four fish caught in about 5 hours on the water. 3 of the fish were on the small side between 27" & 37"'s. My biggest fish was just over 50"'s caught in the same location of the others, just off the river channel in about 32'ft of water. Decided to head home early to get some "wife wants done" stuff completed. Had fun, and look forward to hitting the Rainy again this fall...

You gotta love self timers on camera's. Not my biggest Sturgeon, but still fun.

[Tyler Holm]

WoW!!! I don’t even know where to start. This is my second year attending this trip and it exceeded my expectations by a long ways. The fishing was awesome!

Fiskyknut and I started out Thurs catching fish left and right. Over the course of a half day of fishing we hit 4 doubles (sturgeon doubles) and 6 fish over 40”

45”er

44” Tagged one

These monsters even bit after dark. Fisky and I had 2 of our doubles after dark and several of our larger fish.

Day 2 I continued where Fisky and I left off. 3 minutes into the day I hit a monster!

51.5”

I spend a half hour fighting that fish, and as soon as I got my line back in the I was hit within a minute with a mid 40s fish. A quick release of that fish was immediately followed by another mid 40s fish. Basically in the 1st hour of fishing I was fighting fish for about 55 minutes of it. WoW, Holy, WoW!

My big fish (and personal best) of the weekend came midday on Friday and most of it was caught on film. We’ll see if it makes it into the next HSO video.

52” MONSTER!

On Saturday I was joined by some good college buddies Dave, Craig, and Nick.

It wasn’t long before Dave hooked into his new personal best a 45”er

Craig topped the charts with this 47”

Nick got ahold of his largest fish ever with this 40”er

I put another nice 49”er in the boat as well.

We had a good rain going, but even a better bite for about 2 hours on Saturday. Then the unthinkable happens. I’ll set the scene. Usually when somebody hooks into a decent fish, everybody has to reel up (they like to circle the boat). It was raining, so there was not a lot of conversation going on. I was just watching my rod tip when all of the sudden I hear Dave yell out…IT’S A TRIPPLE. Just before he yelled that, I had a little tap. I though NO-WAY!. A hook-set later we had 4 fish on all at the same time. I don’t know how, but we managed to land all 4 fish within 45 seconds of each other and managed this once in a lifetime photo

Nick & Craig doubling up

A few of these sturgeon had really neat color patters. Check this one out.

Blooper outtake…

All in all 69 sturgeons hit the boat for me this weekend. Man what a trip. I’m out of breath just thinking about it.

[ChuckN]

It was another fantastic trip on the Rainy! This experience is something that has to be a "ritual". There cannot be a fish in Minnesota that fights more than the almighty sturgeon...after minutes of battle, arm aching, back straining force these fish produce is unreal.

A friend of mine, Ron, who had never caught a sturgeon was dying to make this trip, and I think he's hooked good now. In all, he and I boated 28 sturgeon. Biggest was 56" and most in the 40"+ range. Ron lost a biggun near the boat, it was never seen and it broke off heavy musky-class line.

Ron won the multi-species award for a rock bass, bullhead, sucker, eel pout and sturgeon.

A couple pics from the weekend.....before:

After:

[drowningworms]

WOW! THANKS TO EVERYONE ON THIS FORUM FOR HELPING ME CATCH A MONSTER STURGEON. SPECIAL THANKS TO TYLER HOLM AND WHOMEVER PRESENTED THE PODCAST PRIOR TO THE STURGEON EXCURSION! On Thursday, I caught my first Sturgeon ever at 40 inches and then one at 37 inches and my trip was made, or so I thought. On Friday, I landed my third and final (she stripped my drag!) Sturgeon of the trip at 63 inches. No we didn't measure her girth, my bad, but I say she went 80lbs.

[HaywardBound]

Great reports guys!

Nice to meet some of you at Schuster's (great pizza and cheese curds)! Fun to see Hanson's videos on Sat. after getting off the river! (After that I was able to talk the wife into fishing on Sunday).

See you on the river!