Unofficial State Record Sturgeon
From The Alexandria Echo Press:
Every angler who heads to the Lake of the Woods knows there is a chance he or she will catch the fish of a lifetime.
This past July, former Alexandria native Daylon Faber found out firsthand just how big that fish can be. Faber, a 1999 graduate of Jefferson High School, and a group of friends were on a guided trip on Lake of the Woods when winds limited their opportunities to get out onto the main lake on their first day.
The group stuck to a bay during the morning to troll for walleyes. After lunch, the group’s guide brought them onto the Rainy River, where the walleye fishing was fairly slow.
The group decided to anchor and relax while having a line in the water. Faber set up his 10-pound test line with a nightcrawler harness and dropped it in the water.
Within 10 minutes, he latched onto what he thought was a log. A quick run by the fish proved otherwise.
Faber battled the fish for 45 minutes before the sturgeon finally surfaced to give Faber a glimpse of exactly what he was dealing with.
“Everyone had smiles as wide as could be,” Faber said. “Except for [our guide] Bill and me. My smile was lost in the possibility of losing this dinosaur of a fish. Bill’s smile was lost in how to land the beast.”
It took another 30 minutes, but the group did land the fish. It weighed in at 120 pounds, 72” in length with a 33” girth.
The fish is an unofficial state record for a lake sturgeon in Minnesota. Faber did not have a sturgeon tag so he could not register the fish. The official state record is 94.4 pounds, caught in 1994 on the Kettle River. Faber said he had no interest in mounting the fish so having to release him was not a big concern.
“A sturgeon makes a bullhead look like a princess,” he said. “Once we {landed] the beast on the boat and took a bunch of pictures and measurements, we released it back into the river for some other lucky fellow to catch a fish of a lifetime. Looking back, a $5 tag would be worth having my name among the Minnesota record books.”
The biggest fish that Faber had previously caught was a six-pound northern pike.
