What a great time to hit the St Croix River! The leaves are starting to change, the weather is fair, and the fish are biting! I spent the greater part of the day fishing sturgeon, early in the day I was fishing solo, and later I was joined by rod-man and his brother-in-law for some great sturgeon action! My anticipation was great recieving good reports over the telephone before I had even launched the boat.
The action started a bit slow. I couldnt buy a bit for the 1st 45 minutes. I was just pulling up the rear anchor in preparations to move when I got my 1st strike… and a 38″ sturgeon launching out of the water before I could get the rod out of the holder. From there, it was honstly difficult to keep both lines in the water as it seemed I had a strike as quickly as I could return a line to the water after landing a fish(2 rods allowed). Shad was once again the choice bait, once in a while we would put a crawler on the hook with a shad just for the heck of it, it seemed to make no difference.
Catfish were also finding their way into the bag. The day yeilded a couple nice channel cats, and also a bonus 32# Flathead decided to inhale rodman’s shad and add a heck of a nice bonus fish to the boat! Several other channel cats were caught, and a couple other flatheads in other boats the according to the reports. Blacksportsman caught a flat of similar size the night before, and Mr Special’s boat reportedly had landed a 48″ flathead.
In the end, it really summed up to a great day on the croix. We had 2 or 3 fish over the 50″ mark with the largest being a fat 54″ fish. I would have to guess my boat landed 40 fish total between the morning and afternoon bite. It was interesting playing “sturgeon basketball” with the DNR net while tranfering the fish as quickly as possible to get the fish tagged and release as quickly as possible… Brian did an excellent job of motoring trough the spiderweb of lines to collect the fish. The action was consistant, the weather was great, and the fish were bitng. What more can a fisherman really want?
Good luck to everyone hitting the water!
It was a beautiful day on the Croix! Light jackets…but once a big fish was on..they were too hot!
I believe Tyler Holm’s crew had a fish count into the 50’s by the time they left.
I don’t have the data sheet with me Dave, but I believe your boat had the largest sturgeon we tagged. Hanson and Tyler have fish tagged over 50 inches too.
I would love to get out there again today…but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
I’ve only caught sturgeon a couple of time by accident while fishing for walleyes, but it sure was fun
Looks like there weren’t much for lulls in the action. 
With all that excitement goin on how the heck does a guy get a chance to take a drink of his beer 
That sounds strangely familiar!
Brian it was a GREAT day on the water wish you could have seen Dave’s BIG fish, it hit at 8:30 came out of the water TWICE before he could get that NINE FOOT rod out of the holder. it was a chinese fire drill for a while, around the anchor rope once. too big for the net!!
Damm that was fun!!
Thanks for a Great time Dave
you da man
if you guys need a GREAT sturgen/catfish guide get ahold of Dave
at Urban Expert Outdoors
Nice report! Dave did you stay out after dark…just wondering it it mattered what time of day was best?
Great report Dave. I wish i could’ve stayed out longer. But yep my bud Caught his 1st ever Flat. She went 49″x30″. so i’m thinking she hit the #50 mark easily. Will get pix’s up as soon as he emails them to me.
Good luck everyone see ya on the water
Our action was all throughout the day, there wasnt much for lull times. It slowed down drasticly at sunset, the largest fish was a while after sunset and the only fish. Others said the bite picked back up some about 10:30-11:00 pm.
I made it back out yesterday in the wind and insane cruiser traffic. Lots of very light bites, hard to hook fish. We ended up with probably close to 20 fish, nothing of substancial size(maybe low 40″ class).
Sturgeon fishin was fun and I am glad I went but them pleasure boat dummies get pretty old. I also don’t remember Hanson catching one over 50in but I remember catching one.
YA thats extreme boat traffic and idiots on top of that!
Dont ya just love when they are going full blast at ya just to turn and fly past ya about 20 feet away in between all of the people anchored and fishing when they have 400 yards of open water near the wisconsin boarder!!!!!
I cant wait until it gets really cold out so they go away and the fishing gets better
oh and don’t forget the extreme boat launch fee!
I just picked up a season pass for a very reduced price.. no more launch fee’s this year(until Millacs
)
The boat launch fee’s are high on the croix.. but its much more convienient than hitting every public water access on a busy day and spending the $20 in gas and still not getting the boat off the trailer! The weekday rates are lower, and very few cruisers are on the river then… shhhhh
I admit, the cruiser traffic was terrible this weekend, Sunday was worse than Saturday! Its now Tuesday morning and it still feels like my chair is rocking from the boat wakes! The boat wakes arent even noticeable when there is a fish on the end of the line.