On their first sturgeon fishing trip to British Columbia’s Fraser River, two men from Alberta caught a fish that most anglers spend years chasing. The 700-pound sturgeon was just over 10 feet long, with a 57-inch girth, and it’s expected to be around 110 years old.
Steve Ecklund had been invited on sturgeon fishing trips numerous times. He finally decided to go on a catch-and-release guided fishing trip, and he brought along his friend Mark Boice, who hadn’t sturgeon fished before either.
“We’ve never sturgeon fished, never been on the Fraser River,” Ecklund told Global News. He also said he was happy he took the advice of Jeff Grimolfson of River Monster Adventures and decided to go on the trip.
After hooking the sturgeon, it took Ecklund and Boice around 2 hours to get the fish to the boat. They had to keep working on the fish as they chased it in the boat upriver and downriver for a total of more than two river miles. The giant fish stayed deep for the most part, but when it jumped, they realized just how big the monster sturgeon really was.
“It was pretty incredible, really,” Boice said. “To be down there (taking pictures) with it after fighting it for two hours, there were a lot of high-fives.”
Images and video of the catch were shared to Facebook. “Better than eating ice cream,” Boice wrote in a recent Facebook post. This was the most insane scrap I’ve ever been a part of!”
A Pair of Newbies Release a Giant
Sturgeon are a protected species that must be caught-and-released, and the harvest of sturgeon has been illegal in British Columbia since 1994. But since the fish was so large, the guides tagged, scanned, photographed, and documented the fish before releasing it it—and this data went to the the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society.
Read Next: Idaho Biologists Catch and Release Three 10-Foot, 500-Plus Pound Sturgeon
In another Facebook post, Ecklund praised his guides, writing, “We got in the boat this morning as the underdogs and walked out like Tyson Fury. A pair of newbies coupled with a pair of veteran River Monster guides (Nick & Tyler). What ended up transpiring was truly remarkable.”