THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

There is a pretty good chance of cracking the double ton too. Then there are the really big fish going
anywhere between five hundred and a thousand pounds, and the beauty of it is that any and every bite
could genuinely be that fish of a life time.
And still it doesn't end there. From time to time, anglers get completely spooled out by truly monstrous
fish. The largest sturgeon ever recorded from the Fraser measured over twenty feet in length and
weighed in at 1860 pounds.
Because of the catch and release policy, which had been in force for fourteen years prior to our visit,
the bottom eighty miles of the Fraser River is now said to hold around seventy five thousand sturgeon,
though the fishing guides involved in the electronic tagging scheme put the true figure very much
higher, having already tagged in excess of thirty five thousand individuals, with more new fish showing
every day.
Certainly while we were there, a good thirty percent of the fish we caught were not carrying tags. And
with average catches of between four and six fish per day at the slowest time of the year, which
coincided with our visit, it isn't hard to see why the official population estimate is thought to be on the
low side.
Actually, on our first day we boated eleven fish, though unfortunately this did not include the predicted
three figure specimen in there amongst them, with the best fish going around fifty pounds. That meant
that by day two we were theoretically owed a couple of hundred pound plus fish.
Thankfully, by the end of day three, the one to six ratio was back in balance and we were accumulating
numbers towards ton-up fish number four. But there were times, particularly in the early stages, when
I feared the ratio, and in particular my part in it, looked like being missed.
Sturgeon are present in the river all
year round, though the best times are
without doubt the early summer
months when a smelt-like bait fish
know as eulachon swarm into the river,
and again in the autumn when the
salmon are running.
What you also have to take onboard is
that the Fraser River has incredible
runs of five species of Pacific salmon.
The pink salmon run alone, which
occurs every two years, numbers
around thirty million fish, which, with
the many millions of individuals from
the other four species thrown into the
final calculation, makes for the highest
concentration of salmon anywhere on
the planet.
Dave Devine small Sturgeon
What makes this fact important from a sturgeon point of view, is that unlike Atlantic salmon, in the
autumn when Pacific salmon spawn, they all die, providing easy pickings on an unimaginable scale for
anything with a big enough appetite to help in the clean up, which is one of the reasons why there are
so many sturgeon, and why they can grow so big.
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