Sturgeon fishing on the Fraser River

I got an unexpected invitation to go fishing. One of the educational assistants at school said that her husband was going fishing and wondered if I would like to go with him. He is a member of The Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society, and they catch and tag the fish. She said that he only had a small boat, but I might be able to take Daniel. I checked that Daniel was free and went to get a saltwater fishing license. I found that they were available at Wal-Mart, and as a resident for 12 months, I could get a 12 month license for $22.

Daniel and I drove down to meet Peter at around 8:00 am, and we headed off along Highway 1 for Langley. We launched the boat near Fort Langley and headed down the river for a bit before anchoring the boat and setting lines for sturgeon.

Check out some of the pics here.

Sturgeon are one of the oldest families of bony fish in existence, they are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. They are distinctive for their elongated bodies, lack of scales, and occasional great size: Sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3½ m) in length are common, and some species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m). Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders spawning upstream and feeding in rivers and estuaries. While some are entirely freshwater, very few venture into the open ocean beyond near coastal areas.

We hadn't had any bite in the first hour so we pulled the anchor up and moved further down the river. I hadn't realised that we were actually in a side channel of the river, in between Macmillan Island and the bank. As we got to the tip of the island and could see the river at it's full width, it looked huge. It is actually about a kilometre wide at this point. We tied up on a boom of logs that were moored on the western point of the island. We watched a couple of boats that were driftnet fishing. We didn't have any luck here either so this time we headed up river for a few kms. We stopped where the Stave River flows into the Fraser. We caught a couple here.

It was exciting when the first fish took the bait. Peter passed the rod to Daniel, and we started to set up the boat for landing the fish. Daniel started to reel the fish in. Peter set up a stretcher from side to side across the boat and put a couple of buckets of water in for the fish. As the fish was pulled in close to the boat, Peter leaned out and grabbed the fish by the tail and lifted it on to the stretcher. The first thing to do was to remove the hook. We used barbless hooks so that they were easy to pull out. You are not allowed to keep sturgeon - you are only allowed to catch and release. After the hook was removed, we had to scan the fish to see if it had been tagged with a micro-chip. This one hadn't, so we prepared to inject one near the dorsal fin. We checked on the digital reader to make sure that the chip was working and Peter cleaned a syringe with alcohol and got ready to inject it under the skin. After that was done we had to use a tape measure to measure the girth just behind the pectoral fins, and the lenght from the fork of the tail to the tip of the nose. All details were recorded for later input the the register. Once this was done we were ready to take some photos and release the fish back into the river.

We went through that process six time during the day, with the fish ranging from 79 cm through to 118 cm in length. We moved several times, and by the end of the day I had blisters on my hands from pulling in the anchor. The record for the number of fish caught on this boat in a day was six. We came close, because we actually hooked eight, but two of them got off, so we equalled the record. We pulled up the anchor for the last time at about 7:00 pm after being on the water for ten hours, and pulling in 6 good fish.