Last weekend I got into a fight with someone that was not only a foot taller than I am, but also outweighed me by close to 50 pounds.
I got into a pretty good scrap with a six-and-a-half foot, 225-pound white sturgeon on the Fraser River near Chilliwack. (These fish are left over from a prehistoric era when dinosaurs still walked the earth.)
The fight lasted well over 20 minutes and I must say I felt battered and beaten up pretty bad when it was all over.
While I may have landed that fish, I certainly didn’t beat it. It just about pulled me off my feet a couple of times.
My arms felt shaky for a good hour afterwards. My back still hurts. It’s hard to explain, but it was scary and exhilarating, all at the same time.
Sturgeon fishing is unlike any other kind of angling I have ever experienced. The take is incredibly subtle, you watch the rod tip for the slightest tap, and then, once the hook is set, you just hang on as 225 pounds takes off – and when I say “takes off,” I mean that fish ran out a good 150 yards of line before it even showed the slightest indication of slowing down – and then it ran out another 50 or 60 feet more before coming to a stop.
The only thing I can compare it to would be something akin to tying the end of your line onto a freight train and then holding on as it moved out on an open track bound for glory.
Like I said, all I could do was hang on, because there isn’t much chance of stopping a white sturgeon until it decides to stop, and then, pull as hard as you might, you can’t to turn it until it decides to turn. My rod was bent as much as it could bend for the whole 20 minutes. My arms weren’t just hurting, they were burning. I didn’t know if I could hang on, but in the end I brought it to the boat. My friend/fishing partner Corey, with whom I have shared many an hour river fishing, brought his boat to shore where I jumped out and reeled the fish in closer to shore. Corey took a quick photo and then we released it – without the fish ever being taken out of the water.
All sturgeon caught in the Fraser River must be released.
Now I do not intend to debate sport fishing.
All I know for sure is what it feels like to be out on the river, early in the morning as the mist is coming off the water, watching that rod tip, waiting for a sturgeon to strike. I also know what it feels like afterwards.
The effects of catch-and-release on fish have been argued, studied and written about for the better part of the last 50 years. Numerous studies (which have measured both the effects of various types of fishing tackle and angling techniques on fish mortality) have concluded that the physiological effects of stress (as a result of being caught) are usually pretty well reversed within a 24-hour period.
Common sense, as well as scientific data show that the longer fish are out of the water, the more they become stressed and that a minimal amount of handling not only reduces the amount of post-catch stress but also the risk of physical injury due to struggling and loss of body slime.
Either way, proper catch- and-release practices are important, not only to the survival of fish that are caught, but also to the future of fish like the white sturgeon to be available to catch in years to come.
I can’t wait to get out on the river again this fall. Maybe my arms will have recovered by then.