Report from my Fraser River Shoot

[Jim Sammons LJKF]

Our trip to the Fraser River was a real learning experience. We had to learn about the fish, how to fight them, how to set up anchors that would hold but be easy to release, fishing while on anchor, fighting fish while on anchor in ripping fast current, and how to land these brutes.

The first step was just getting on the guide boat for a day and learning a bit about fishing for the sturgeon and getting a feel for this big river. Funny enough we never got a bite while fishing from the boat.

Sturgeon are protected in the Fraser and are a 100% CnR fish, so great care is taken to make sure you can release these fish as healthy as possible. A big part of that is keeping the fight as short as possible and this means fighting the fish while on anchor not going for a ride down river. If you were off anchor the fish could just swim down river putting out very little effort and the fight would last hours.

Having never fought a fish while on anchor let alone one this big and in this heavy water added a very big challenge. Heck just getting your anchor set and dealing with the ropes and clipping in before the anchor came tight was a real learning experience and at times pretty hairy. In the case of a big fish getting all your line the anchor must be able to be dumped, so a quick release with a float is necessary. We learned on the first day on the kayaks what a chore this could be, when the floats we had got pushed straight under water from the fast flow. The guys in the boat had to go fishing for floats to get them back.
That day was spent tied to the back of the anchored boat because of our anchor set ups failure but we had the chance to hook and land some smaller sturgeon from our kayaks and saw the challenges of just landing the fish in the fast water.

The next day, with larger floats, we fished on our own on anchor and caught a few better fish in the 5-6 foot range. We learned that the best thing to do once the fish was tired and at the kayak was to drop anchor and land the fish while adrift, so that you were not fighting the current. With this figured out were were able to get a couple fish up for some good shots. Of course being careful not to get cut by the sharp plates on the side of the fish, called scoots.

When the boats catch a big fish, once the fish is tired, they will slowly drag the fish to shore into a couple feet of water for the photos and to check for tags or tag the fish if needed. Two of the fish we caught had been previously tagged. We wanted to try to do the same thing in our kayaks, which really is the only way we could have landed one of the real big fish.
We got to test this when Paul got our biggest fish of the trip and I hooked up to the back of him with my Torque and motored him to shore. The fish measured 9 foot 6 inches nose to tip of tail. We did it again when Paul got to pull me paddling when I landed a fish over 6 foot that weighed at least 125 pounds.
It really was an awesome trip and a great learning experience that I think will make a couple great episodes of our show. I used the Torque with the motor for a couple days of the shoot but spent most of my time with the motor out and paddling, really didn't want to get the anchor line caught in the motor.
Paul with a nice learning size fish, his biggest fish in his life up to this point.

Paul's, Now, biggest fish of his life.

Another learning size fish, You can see the size of the anchor float in the back of my kayak which at times was totally submerged.

Me demonstrating the Leg Lift.

Paul giving me an assist to shore.

On shore shot of my 6 footer.

Paul's Monster and current biggest fish of his life, I don't think he will be beating this one for a while.