In the past several years, my friend Ross from UK has been coming back to the Fraser Valley each October to sturgeon fish with STS Guiding Service. What makes him come back for these bizarre looking fish often baffles me. It isn't my personal favorite, but I do enjoy watching others when they find themselves with a monster at the end of their stick. A sturgeon trip with first timers always guarantees a good time. It is more than just a fishing outing, but quite often it turns into an entertaining social event. After Ross returned from fishing with IronNoggin/Matt at Browns Bay for chrome chum salmon, he headed to Vic's place for two weeks of sturgeon madness. While having dinner with Marco and me just before he left, he mentioned that we should come join him for a day on the boat. The date was set, we also asked fishersak/Mark to tag along as he had never caught a sturgeon before.
The last time I was out with Ross, a 6 footer took the bait while we dazed away. The rod was bent to the point that Ross was having a very difficult time getting it out of the holder. I was hoping to experience similar excitement during this trip because my goal was to document everything on film.
Our guide for the day was Ken Deptuck from STS Guiding Service. Ken, who is also a forum member, has fished with Chris and I before for steelhead. We were very confident knowing that a good rod was on board to show us how it's done.
We immediately got into fish when we arrived at the first spot. The bites were on and off, a very entertaining trip. Both Marco and Mark fought a couple of sturgeon to the boat. I also volunteered to bring one in.
The rainstorm halfway through was rather crazy, the heater under the canopy became my best friend. Once the storm cleared, the mountain view around us was rather spectacular. Ross also connected with a few fish. One of them was pretty stubborn...
In total, seven fish were brought to the boat, all were between 4 and 5.5 ft in length. Lunchtime was amazing. As usual, Marco came prepared with sockeye sandwiches, bear and deer pepperoni, wild game ham. Even if the fishing was slow, a big feast on a comfortable jet boat would be satisfying enough.
It was an excellent trip with great companions. Ross will most likely be back again next year so we'll get our sturgeon fix until next year. I just got off the phone with him not long ago and he said yesterday he landed a 8.5ft fish.
PhotosPlease click on the thumbnail to view.
Video
This trip is also november's video feature for subscribers. 28 minutes of white dino battling action are now available, enjoy!
Best way to watch the video clips is to download them to your computer by right click on the link, select "save as..." and view after the entire file is on your computer, instead of downloading it while you watch in the media player (semi-streaming, which may have interruptions). The current video window size is set at 720px X 480px. If you find the resolution not great, you can reduce the size to 50% (Right click on video, select "video size", select "50%").
Author
Topic: Fraser River October 29th - A couple of sturgeon firsts (Read 8038 times)