Can you target Great Lakes Sturgeon....Absolutely!
Sturgeon seem like they belong in salt water. They are strangest looking creatures and pull like a plow horse. Then just when the fight gets good, they breach two or three times. There just isn’t any fish like them. Sturgeon are definitely making a very slow come back around the Great Lakes Region. Many anglers are hooking into them and get into a real slug fest. We decided to see if they could actually be targeted and I think I have found a new passion.
Again, it is very important to check all regulations and even more importantly, return all back to the depths. They really make an aweful mount anyways. Sturgeon can be legally caught and released in Great Lakes and connecting waters. So we started there. I had actually caught one last year in this little hole up on the St Mary’s River or should I say the fish caught me. When you’re jigging with 10 pound test you really don’t have a lot of torque, but it sure was fun. So I called a buddy and we ran up for a day of fishing and filming.
It was a little slow at first and we actually caught a few walleyes and several beautiful Red Horse suckers up to five pounds. About an hour into the day we finally hooked into our first Sturgeon, a 20-pounder. Well, cool. We got one. But they just were not coming fast enough, so I decided to glop a few more crawlers on the 1/0 hook and poured some Berkley Walleye attractant scent on ‘em and threw it back down. It wasn’t 5 minutes and we were hooked up with four footer. Sturgeon have an amazing sense of smell and could probably sniff this out from hundreds of yards away. We landed the fish and took a few photos and gently let the fish go. It swam away gingerly giving us the tail as it descended. We now knew we were on to something and we globed the rest of the poles and got ready. Wow. The next sturgeon was on in less than 10 minutes and was a brute. It immediately breached hard right into the side of the boat and almost knocked me down! One more jump and then the worst bulldog fight in 20 years and we had a six-footer to the boat. Amazing.
We landed seven Sturgeon in about 4 hours, and my arms are still aching. I’m really wondering what the real numbers and sizes of these awesome fish are in the Great Lakes. We know there are some monsters in Black Lake, and see several caught on the Detroit River every spring, and I have to believe we have fish swimming in the great lakes that are close to the size of the monsters in the Columbia. Sturgeon inhabit most of the Great Lakes tributaries both on the east and west sides of the state. The current state record weighed 193 pounds and measured 87 inches. We didn’t come close but we were having a lot of fun. Sturgeon can live well over 100 years and females don’t start reproducing until they are 20 to 25 years old. Officially called Acipenser Fulvescens, they are in the family of non-bony fishes. That is until you feel how hard their plate-like skin is especially on top of their backs! Sturgeon only spawn on the average every 4 years, so again it is imperative we protect the species. But there is nothing I have witnessed as exciting as a big sturgeon on the end of my line breaching out of the water like a 50-pound smallmouth. They are truly incredible.
