Off topic - Sturgeon!

 OK, this is not going to be a sports card related post.  If you don't want to see pictures with me in them or with fish in them, you should probably leave now!!

My son has REALLY gotten into fishing the last few years.  I never fished as a kid, so we have learned together.  He would love to fish every day for 10 hours if I would let him.  It get's kind of tiring for me sometimes, but how can I complain when I have a kid that wants to spend time with me?

Anyway, he fishes for small stuff around here, trout, steelhead, carp, bluegill, suckerfish, really whatever is biting at the time.  And of course, he's always on the lookout for something different, and especially something bigger!

Well this last week was his 16th birthday, and I had promised him a couple of years ago that I would take him on a one day charter fishing trip for the big 16.  I figured he'd want to go deep sea fishing, but instead he chose sturgeon fishing, with the hope of getting something really big.  Spoiler alert, he was not disappointed!!

Unfortunately, I was pretty busy while we were out there, so the pictures don't really do it justice, but there are a few below.  We were out for about 7 hours, and we caught 9 sturgeon!  Far beyond our expectations!  On the drive over, he said that he just hoped to catch something bigger than him.  He's 5'5", 115 lbs.  I told him he had a good chance, but not to get his hopes up.

5 minutes after our first casts, we hooked one up, and he started the fight.  About 10 minutes later, with a little help, he pulled in this one:

It's about 4.5 feet, and probably weighed 35 lbs, but as you can see by his face, he was pretty happy.  It was a new personal best for him, if not quite his goal.  And no, that's not me in the pic, that's one of the guys running the boat.  Good thing they were there, because we caught a few that we would never have gotten to the boat without their help!

Like I said, the pics are not great (and definitely don't capture the sheer size of these things!), but here are a few (and some video).

This is my boy trying with all his might to pull a big one up from the bottom.  They are deep (50-90 feet down where we were), and a bear to bring up to the surface.  We would rotate, giving 3 or 4 of us a turn on each fish because it was so much work.  5-10 minutes on one person working, then hand it off to fresh hands.  And yes, that's ugly old me looking on.

Here we are after a long fight holding on to an 8 footer.  When you turn them over like that, they stop thrashing about.  Anything over 54 inches, you are not allowed to take out of the water.  And much bigger than that, you couldn't haul up anyway, nor would you want them thrashing around and wrecking your boat.

Here is a so-so pic of a 9 footer!!

And my son letting an 8 footer go:

And the last of the pics, a different 9 footer.  It would look a lot better if the tail wasn't pointing down.  To me it looks like a 7 footer there, but we measured it, and believe me, it was 9.

Here are videos of that one (I think?):

Unfortunately, we didn't get a pic of the biggest one.  It was so hard to drag it up that we were all exhausted.  In fact, at the end, the boat captain had to get on leather gloves and pull the last few feet up by pulling the line with his hands, because we couldn't pull it up any more with the pole.  Then we rolled it on its back, but before we could get pics, the sheer weight of it pulled it out of his hands.  My son tried to reach out and grab it, but if he had gotten a grip, it just would have pulled him into the water with it.  The captain felt pretty bad about losing it.

Here is some video of getting the 10 footer up to the boat:

And some video of losing him:

It was significantly bigger than the 9 footers.  Maybe it doesn't seem that way in the video, but in person, it was impressive, even intimidating.  The captain was guessing 11 feet, but my son and I are calling it 10.5 feet, just to be safe.  It was also much thicker, bulky!!  The captain said it likely weighed about 600 lbs and was probably 80-100 years old.  It was a real monster!!

Needless to say, my son had the time of his life, and wants to start saving money to go again.  The captain told him it isn't usually this amazingly good, but I don't think he cares.  We ended up catching 9 total, with lengths (a couple estimated, but most actual measurements) of: 4'6", 5'5", 6'1", 8'1", 8'3", 9'0", 9'4, 9'7" and the whopper at 10'6"!!

Next post will be back to cards, thanks for reading!!