Last years sturgeon fishing in the Delta was incredible. I made a call to one of my long time clients that has been fishing for sturgeon before I was born. I let him know I’ve been fishing over a school of sturgeon that had to number into the thousands. My Lowrance HDS continuously showed sturgeon on the screen for about a mile. He said in all his years he had never heard of a school like that. I said, “Lets go catch some sturgeon!”
The morning started early, as I arrived at the boat launch about twenty minutes early. Planning on getting the boat in order for the day, Sid was already anxiously waiting for me in the parking lot with his two sons Matt and Eric. We loaded the boat and left the dock heading toward the fishing grounds where I was hoping the fish did not leave the area. About a half mile before getting to the prime spot I slowed the boat down to start looking for sturgeon.
We were not disappointed. Sturgeon were everywhere. Sid was insisting that we drop anchor as he has never seen so many sturgeon. I insisted the school would get thicker a couple of hundred yards farther; it did. We dropped anchor right on top of a large school. The anchor held and the fish did not move. We quickly got our rods into the water and set the rods into the balancers. As the boat swayed in the current, we starred at the rod tips with Sid, Matt and Eric utterly amazed that there were so many fish were under the boat.
The first hit took almost ten minutes with Matt swinging for the stars as he set the hook, only to come up empty handed. I rebaited the hook with eel and roe combo, and immediately casted the new bait into the water. Within minutes Matt hooked his first sturgeon of the year, a small one we had to throw back.
Now knowing what the sturgeon want to eat, we reeled all the rods up and changed to the eel roe combo Matt had his first two hits on. Now that all the rods had the same bait, the action heated up. Having over thirty hits in a six hour period and landing seven with two keepers, Sid could only say unbelievable.
