Friday night I joined Steve Demars, blacksportsman, and Mr Keb for a night on the river in excitement of the long awaited sturgeon season on the St Croix river. We launched early and decided to target cats for a few hours until the season opened at midnight for sturgeon. The wind was calm, the air was humid and cool, and the bugs were minimal which made for a very enjoyable and comfortable night on the river.
Since we launched early, we had planned to spend some time targeting flathead and channel catfish in a couple of Steve’s favorite catfish retreats. The catfish did not want to cooperate, our efforts payed off in a king size sheephead, and a nice gar inhaled Mr Kebs shad to add a little variety to the evening. This was Mr Kebs 1st Gar ever, so a pictue was in line. The catfishing was not panning out, and midnight was quickly approaching. We picked up anchor and headed a few miles away to some of our favorite sturgeon holes.
We arrived and dropped anchor at about 12:10 a.m., it didnt take us long to have our lines in the water. The fish didnt leave us waiting very long. Mr Keb broke the ice around 12:30 with his 1st sturgeon of the season. The action was not fast, but it was very consistant for most of the night. The fish seemed to move through in waves. The bait of choice was shad by far. The shad seemed to be getting the majority of the bites, and the fish that were caught averaged larger in size. We were fishing in water about 30′ deep, we only fished one spot all night for sturgeon, and when it was all said and done with, the total count was 21 sturgeon landed.
The moral of the story came down to be… it was a great night with even better company! Everyone had a great time! We launched at about 8:00 pm, and picked up the anchors at 7:00 a.m. to end the night. None of the fish were huge, but even the moderate size fish are eager to do battle! The 2 largest fish of the evening came as a double(the only double) and they were twins at 43″ in length. Most of the fish ranged from lower to upper 30’s for length.
Thank you once again to the IDAers that made this trip what it was.. a great time! I look forward to running into others this fall!
There will be another fishing report in the species specific forum soon! I made it out again the evening of 9/1 and we had another good evening on the water with some larger fish, and a few surprises! Look for the report soon in the sturgeon section!
21 fish is awesome Dave!
What other baits did you try? …and thanks for saving me money on not having to buy bait that isn’t producing.
Great report, could wait for you to get it up this morning. I can’t wait to get out there and try for some sturgeon this year.
That was an awesome read Dave
A 21 fish night, way cool
I kept some detailed catch information for my journal and this is a synopsis of our fishing action on Saturday, 1 September:
The weather was clear and cooling. Air temp in the 50 – 60 degree range. Water temp 72 degrees. The wind was light from the south with periods of calm. Moon was waning with 86% illumination. St Croix is at normal pool elevation of 675.5′.
Out of the 21 fish caught – 10 were caught on shad; 7 were caught on cut sucker and four were caught on nightcrawlers. In my opinion, bait choice is not that critical as they seem to be taking whatever they stumble on as they cruise the bottom feeding.
Of 21 fish caught: 7 were less than 30″ in length; 10 were in the 30″ to 40″ range; 3 were over 40″. No fish over 50″ were caught. 1 fish was lost right at the boat – I counted it as caught but it was not measured.
There were four of us fishing. 3 anglers caught 6 fish each and 1 caught 3 fish. We fished all around the boat and there was no fish preference for a particular location – we had bait presented both upstream and downstream of the boat and it did not seem to affect the bite in any way.
1 fish had a tag: MN DNR F29,924
We had a flurry of activity from 1:00am to 3:30am catching 16 of our fish in that time frame and then it slowed considerably. It seemed like they would bite in waves. In my opinion, if the bite drops off and you start going 20 to 30 minutes between fish it may payoff to move. I’m not sure you have to move very far – you just need to get yourself back in front of the moving fish, I would try moving upstream first.
Very interesting and detailed Statistics.
Got to hand it to you Steve, takes time to do and most won’t bother. But when you get numbers like that and you have a variety of fisherman and baits it make things interesting.
thanks for sharing!
Way to go on the nice fish Mates!!!
I didnt realize you guys were getting that many fish on suckers WAY over on the other side of the boat!
As silly as it sounds, when their is a cabin between fishermen, its easy to lose track of what is going on.
I know Karl and myself kept crawlers out all night long on one line each. In the end, a 17/4 ratio on fish vs crawlers is a very one sided result.
Eels like shad too… although I caught the 1st eel of the year last night on a crawler(only thing all night on crawler), the eel managed to burp up shad all over my boat.
Thanks for taking me out to get my first ever sturgeon in my life Dave. I had a great time. Got the pictures on here too fine. Now I gotta get em up here:D
It was a pleasure getting you on the water Paul!
If you need help posting the pics, you can email them to me(I need them anyhow
)
[email protected]
Can’t wait Dave!!!! See ya Thursday.
Steve, what did you find out from the DNR about your tagged sturgeon?
Welcome to IDA Clean Run!
Cool display name!
…and your son would be…Clean Break Off?
Have a good time on IDA!
Thanks for the reminder about the sturgeon tag. I didn’t catch the fish, Karl did. I will follow up to see if he reported it and try to get the information.
We fished the chippewa river fri. morning in Eau Claire.. Double at 7 am, 40in. and a 49 in… An hour later I caught a 55 inch beast… took us all over the river. Guess 15 # line is a little light…Had a blast but no legal fish. 60 inches is a lotta fish!!! Tight lines, have fun.