I saw Brian’s post about a big fish from up on the Rainy, so thought I’d better write my own post to finish his story.
My friend Steve and I were supposed to attend the Excursion, but I HAD to delay our trip to this last Monday til late last night. We arrived home at 6 am this morning.
This Sturgeon measured 69 X 30 inches using a 12 foot steel tape. We only measured it once, but we did carefully.
After fighting the fish behind the boat for (what I thought was) quite awhile, the fish started to head up stream. We got the back anchor out quickly, and I tried to hold the fish from getting up past the front of the boat, but just could not hold it, it just took line, on a heavy drag when IT WANTED TO. She DID get hung up in my main anchor rope, and I could feel my braided line rubbing on the anchor rope. I tried to hold the rod with one hand, and pull the boat forward (in a heavy current) with the other, and had to make a decision which way to unwrap my line. I put the rod under the rope, and when doing so, the fish took off downriver. Luckily, I made the right choice with the rope. When the fish took off, I had the rod with one hand, and immediately dropped the anchor rope and took off to the back of the boat and getting two hands back on the rod. After what seemed like a long hard battle, she came up along side the boat and I could finally meet my dancing partner. We could not believe the true size and girth of this fish. It took 3 tries to get it into my Musky net, we finally did, and managed to get it barely lifted and into the floor of the boat.
We didn’t really know what we had, the overall size was just shocking.
After measuring the fish, I was able to get it lifted for some quick photos, and as carefully as I could manage, place her back into the water, and she was quickly gone.
The DNR graph chart for length/girth for Sturgeon shows this fish at 97 pounds, which I found out would have made it a New State Record Lake Sturgeon. I am surprized with that, and am very happy this fish is protected and very healthy and alive in the Rainy River.
I’ve heard from people in the know, that there are plenty of fish still in the lake, and waiting for water levels to come down before they enter.
I added a few pictures of the 69,
my friend Steve got some nice fish, including his PB, 49 1/2
and the last picture, shows what my have caused some problems for a few people, I boated this almost NEW anchor, and full length of quality rope.
If you head up north, take the camera, it just may be your biggest fresh water fish ever, or a potential State Record.
Good Luck,
Jack
Jack – Congratulations on the HOG!!! 
