Sturgeon

I went Sturgeon fishing on San Francisco Bay this weekend. Sturgeon are about the trickiest fish to catch around here. They come into the bay in the winter, to hoover up herring eggs and eat shrimp and clams. Winter means cold, bad weather; not ideal on a kayak. Also, their food is stationary, meaning you and your bait have to be stationary and thus even colder.

So you have to rig up an anchor, but one that can be quickly released, because another thing about sturgeon is they are massive. The record for the bay is over 9ft. Fish over 6ft are fairly common, in fact, to protect them from overfishing they have to be between 46 and 66 inches long for you to be able to keep them. Being anchored in a kayak when you're hooked into a fish that size is not safe.

They are also "light biters"; it's very easy to miss a sturgeon bite, often you don't even know you had a bite until you reel in an empty hook; the sturgeon will just suck your bait off your hook without you realising. So you have to pay very close attention and keep the rod in your hand at all times.

Finally, sturgeon are hard to find. They're out there, but spread out in the vast shallow flats of San Francisco Bay and the delta system that feeds it. You can go days without getting a bite. I calculated I have spent over 60 hours fishing for sturgeon, In that time I think I had a bite. One bite. That was in 2007.

What a great combination huh? Anchored all day in the pouring rain on San Francisco Bay, in January, staring intently at the tip of my fishing rod in the hopes of getting a bite that in all probability will never come.

I told you I was addicted.

There are other fish in the bay. Among the least desired and most maligned are the batrays, Myliobatis californica. Most fishermen don't like them because they are common and steal bait intended for other fish. They're also not really good eats because they live in the bay year round and are thus considered a little unhealthy for consumption. Plus the best thing anyone has ever said about eating them is they taste like scallops. I don't like scallops. But I do like catching batrays; they can also get very big and are incredibly powerful. This weekend I hooked into a monster that towed me around the bay for over 20 minutes. Here I am whizzing past a fellow kayaker (these are all thumbnails, click on them for the full size picture).



The ray spun me like a top and we came back past again, in this pic you can actually see that the kayak is generating a wake; we were motoring.



Eventually I managed to battle the ray up to the side of my kayak; I shot some video

(CLICK ON THUMBAIL FOR VIDEO)

Here is a still of the batrays head so you can get a better idea of the size. You can see its wing stretching out underwater in the top right of the picture.



I unhooked the batray and sent it on its way. I paddled back to my anchor and set up again in the rain. I was with a flotilla of other kayakers all hoping for sturgeon. The fishing had been, in sturgeon terms, very good for the last couple of weeks. There were 16 of us out there that day. One legal sturgeon was caught. By ~3.45pm, those of my fellow kayakers who were still out decided to call it a day; the paddle back to the launch was ~30 minutes and they didn't want to get stuck in the dark. I was crestfallen. I couldn't believe the day had gone already.

I stuck it out until they were specks in the distance and then hauled anchor myself for the 30 min paddle back. I got all the way back to ~400 ft from the launch beach when I decided to have one last crack; it wasn’t (quite) dark yet and I had one shrimp bait left. It was a pretty puny little shrimp, one of the two I managed to dig up myself the previous day. Fresh live shrimp are the best bait. I cast out and waited. After 10 more mins of nothing in the rain I called it a day and reeled in……but, well, the shrimp was still twitching. I cast out again and gave it 10 more min…..11……12. Alright, enough, that’s it, time to go……........hold on…….......... there was a tap on the line, another tap, and a slow bend....... I swung the rod as hard as I could and felt a massive weight on the end.

Straight away the fish broke the surface and I saw it was a sturgeon. A big sturgeon. Oh man. Now I was in a bit of a pickle. For a fish this size, on a kayak, it's not uncommon to be fighting them for over half an hour before you can bring them to the boat. There was no way I could fight this thing for half an hour; it would be dark and I would be halfway to Hawaii. Plus, this was a big fish. If I wanted to keep it, which I did, I would have to measure it to confirm it was between 46 and 66 inches. That would mean it could weigh up to 130 lbs. (That's over nine stone to the Brits reading this). To land and measure a big sturgeon usually requires a team effort and a piece of equipment called a sturgeon snare that loops over the fish and allows you to keep it restrained while you measure it. My team had all gone home and I had dropped my snare overboard the week before (I was relying on my team for a snare as well as help with the measuring).

I hollered on the radio, but the guys were packing up and all their radios were off. I could see them packing up on the beach as the sturgeon towed me off into the gloom. It was rather foolish of me to have been out there on my own, but as I was getting into my 61st hour of trying, I hadn't expected this to me The Moment. There was nothing else to do; I buttoned down the drag on my reel and put my back into the fight. Luckily the sturgeon decided to stay local, and towed me round in ever-decreasing circles. A few times I got it close to the boat, but when I reached out to grab it took off again, tearing the line off my reel even with the drag tightened down. After what felt like ~15 years I finally got it to the boat for good. I was very sure it was legal. I hauled it out of the water and into my lap and made sure with the tape measure.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


(CLICK ON THUMBAIL FOR VIDEO)

I tried to paddle in to the launch but had to stop short with ~200 feet to go because the water was too shallow to paddle; it was low tide. So I got out and waded my way through the shallows and onto the beach, dragging my kayak behind me. Only one kayaker was left, strapping his boat to the roof of his car. I tried to explain to him what had happened but could only manage a stream of breathless gibberish, waving my arms around like a lunatic. Eventually he figured it out and came down to the beach in disbelief and snapped a few pics for me. The sturgeon finally taped out at 60 inches (my guesstimate is 53 in the video). I have no idea how heavy, "very" is my best guess. I could hardly hold it up.





Even two days later my arms are sore, but I've eaten a lot of sturgeon. It tasted really good, although very unfish-like.

I think I'm done with sturgeon for a long time. It was a lot of fun, but our freezer is full and there's no need to catch another one. My addiction can be placated by batrays, who fight as hard but grow much more quickly and are a lot more abundant.