How did you do?

Community hole is pretty much the whole bayport area. Ive caught fish anywhere from just a lil ways upstream of the bayport launch to 1/4mile upstream of the powerlines. I personally like to target the 30-36′ but have caught them in 20’fow as well.
I know this sounds vague, but sometime ya gotta move around a bit to find them and dont be afraid to try on charted waters. As we did lastnite and was kindly rewarded.

Lastnite was a lot slower and we had to move around a couple of times before we landed our 1st fish. we only manage to boat 4 fish.
However, one of the 4 was this MOOSE 60×27.

A quick reference, the beam on my boat is 68″ and my bud is 6’0″
She is the FATTEST sturgeon Ive ever boated in my boat.
It was a Chinese FireDRill. She jumped 3 times clear out of the water, once right next to the boat and found the rear anchor rope. After we landed her, all of us were exhausted including the fish.

I was worried she was too exhausted. I called up WWG n Dtro wondering if there were any tips to help revive her. It took us about 15mins to revive her, but she did finally swim away perfectly.

Whoah! When you gonna have an open seat for your old friend Pug?

Nice fish. Almost looks as fat as a Rainy sturgeon. Maybe they have had plenty of food.

Question for all. Don’t shad populations run in cycles of lots of numbers to little numbers?

Yes, the bigger the fish the longer it takes to revive them. I’ve hung over the side of the boat for 20 minutes to make sure they were ready to go before releasing them.

A beautiful female I’m sure!!

I’m betting you won’t forget that dance for a while! LOL!

Having never even gone sturgeon fishing these things are a bit of a mystery to me. How much does a 60″ sturgeon weigh? What a monster. How big do they get?

Seems it can even be a numbers game at times unlike flathead fishing, and even multi species. Awesome!

That fish should be in the 60 pound range. They are a hoot Moose!!

If only flatheads would jump clean out of the water! LOL!

They are a blast!!
quite often a big sturgeon will run at you and seem like a tiny fish until it she the boat “or myslef” and then take off like a bat out of HE11 on ya.

BK,
would you have that lenghtxgirth conversion chart for sturg’s or know where i can find it?

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Yes, the bigger the fish the longer it takes to revive them.

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The warmer the water, the longer it takes, too!

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Yes, the bigger the fish the longer it takes to revive them.

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The warmer the water, the longer it takes, too!

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Last year was my first year sturgeon fishing and we didn’t go out until late September when the water was much cooler.
We noticed that the ones we got the other night didn’t seem to fight nearly as much as the ones we got last year.

Does water temp effect the amount of fight they’ve got in them or did we just hook into some wimpy fish?

Or did I just get that much stronger?

Very nice fish. If you are only going to get a few might as well get the right ones.

Might head back over tonight. Any idea what boat traffic and trailer parking will be like. It was pretty decent mid week.

thx,
I can safety say that there will be a greater amount of boat traffic. esp on a nice friday like today, but the hoards of traffic should slow dwn after sundwn.

even on the busiest days i’ve always been able to find a trailer spot at the launch.

good luck and take plenty of pix

Speakin of pix here’s a few more of the Moose from lastnite

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Does water temp effect the amount of fight they’ve got in them or did we just hook into some wimpy fish?

Or did I just get that much stronger?

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Yes, absolutely. Early season on the Rainy I’ve found that they are much more sluggish. Still an unbelieveable fight though.

Got a bakers dozen last night with 5 over 45 and a 62 the biggest. Not nearly as fat as Lumpy’s fish though.

What are you doing on the computer? shouldnt ya still be out there?
u guys are troopers for stayin out that late, but i guess it paid off eh?
Congrats

Worst night I’ve ever had out there last night. Both for near death experiences and fish. 8 hours and not a single bite for me. 2 tiny fish on crawlers for John.

Had 2 full beers spilled by Tuna boats… and that is unacceptable.

One guy ran though our boats after dark at about 60. Problem was that the anchored boats were about 75ft apart. Plus he did it on purpose. Had I been a little more spry he would have found out what it felt like to get a Summit bottle to the dome at 60.

I keep forgetting to grab a handfull of rocks for defense when I go out at night.

A beer bottle would be littering.

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A beer bottle would be littering.

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Only if it lands in the water.

All kidding aside, it was crazy out there. I will fully admit that the 8 boats spread apart anchored in the channel didn’t help the situation, but most boats recognized that and would slow down to a crawl and creep through us. Not this guy, he slowed down, got his path lined up and punched it.

Karma is a female dog though because on the way back upstream I think he knew to steer clear (as we might retaliate) and as he was roaring around everyone, he toasted his motor. I didn’t see one boat pull anchor to go help him.

Negligent Operation (46 USC 2302 (a) (b))

Federal law prohibits the negligent or grossly negligent operation of a vessel and/or interference with the safe operation of a vessel so as to endanger lives and/or property. The U.S. Coast Guard may impose a civil penalty for negligent operation. Grossly negligent operation is a criminal offense and an operator may be fined up to $5,000.00 USD, imprisoned for one year, or both.

Some actions that may constitute grossly negligent operation (criminal offense) are:

* Operating a vessel in a designated swimming area
* Excessive speed in the vicinity other vessels or in regulated waters
* Hazardous water skiing or other water sports practices.
* Bowriding, or riding on a seatback, gunwale, or transom.
* Operating a boat while under the influence or alcohol or drugs (higher severe penalties may be imposed for BUI see our section on BUI for more information)

Might want to keep this CFR handy to aid the DNR or Sheriff when making a report.

46 USC 2302 (a) (b)

Croix Sturgeon 9/10/11

Nothing big but a 1st on the Croix for me, Thanks BK

Holy hanna that a lil too close for comfort.
I would love to see that area turned into a NO WAKE zone, during the sturgeon season. Not even a long stretch, say for about 300yrds or so down stream from the power lines.

I was out Saturday morning with my brother and caught nothing as far as Sturgeon go, but we did run into a little bit of a surprise. We ended up catching several Long-nose Gar? I only have a picture of the one, but it seemed like we caught two different kinds. The one pictured and another one that had more spots and a much longer, more narrow snout. The DNR website only recognizes the Long-nose Gar but it definitely seemed like they were two different ones. We caught them in the stream that comes out from the Plant by the power lines. We saw these fish surfacing like crazy so we thought we would check it out before we were done for the day thinking we might get into some bass or maybe northern, but we soon found out that we weren’t dealing with fish that I had ever seen before. Needless to say, it turned out to be a fun experience.

Very hard to catch with hook and line!

I’ve never handled one that size before. Weren’t the teeth sharp? Generally when I see fingers in the mouth of a gar there’s blood in the photo too.

The teeth were very sharp. Luckily I escaped with no bloodshed. We got a total of 4 in the boat, but we probably had another 15 on for a moment or two. We tried everything from setting the hook really hard to letting them run with it, but we couldn’t get a consistent hookup.

Why not a “flare gun” when you are night fishing to give warning to a person coming to close?

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Holy hanna that a lil too close for comfort.
I would love to see that area turned into a NO WAKE zone, during the sturgeon season. Not even a long stretch, say for about 300yrds or so down stream from the power lines.

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I’d like to see every tuna boat owner and buyer be forced to attend a boating class, especially the large boat owners on the Croix. I’m sure they are intelligent people but when they get behind the wheel of a boat they get stupified

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Why not a “flare gun” when you are night fishing to give warning to a person coming to close?

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Seriously Gary, I would bet they would think it’s fireworks.

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I keep forgetting to grab a handfull of rocks for defense when I go out at night.

A beer bottle would be littering.

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I hear ya there… I always have a good long stare down with the flare guns when grabbing supplies. I fish from kayak, and do my best to make myself out of the way on the river from boats, and fish in the heavily sand barred areas up by Scandia and I get people that think it’s funny to buzz the yak, I had one guy do a complete loop beside me and almost wake me over… You can imagine my taunts once he hit the sandbar with his motor that I was anchored on.

Rschmidty-

To clarify your gar, what you have pictured there looks like a shortnose gar. There are 2 different species in the state and it sounds like you caught both. I personally couldn’t think of a better back up plan to slow sturgeon fishing than catching gar! And 5 of 19 sounds about right for hook up percentages. They are tough. Shortnose are “more” catch-able on lures/hooks than longnose, but you can get lucky. Rope lures works best for longnose if they are attacking bait. Might have to stick some in the boat, but hoping with this cool down I won’t have to and the sturg action will pick up. Good luck.