Wishing on a shooting star

[MuskieBait]

Michael and I drove many miles chasing after a dream, on an invite that a friend extended to us. Due to the preciousness of these fish and their threatened status across their range, much of the location detail has been withheld . Crossing the US border was rather interesting...luckily we came back in three intact pieces.

This will be relative brief for such an epic catch...

We were fishing for channel catfish over the weekend when my friend Eli caught a surprise Lake Sturgeon at this undisclosed spot.




On the second night...

Eli once again arrived at 8pm. After setting up, we sat around chatting. Eli got up to look into the darkness as I stared skyward admiring the constellations. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright streak descended and disappeared behind Eli’s head.

“Shooting star!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, a bright one too.” Eli confirmed.

I swiveled my head toward the southern sky to wonder if I could find the origin of this celestial event. I just happened to look in the right direction when a second meteorite (or perhaps space junk) burned up brightly in the atmosphere.

“Another one! You know what I had wished for, right?”

“Haha, I think I had an idea.” Michael chuckled.

As soon as he finished his sentence, the bells on my rod shook with two violent rings and the bite alarm immediately beeped with a furious tone. The fish was already taking line out of the baitrunner on the hit. I grabbed the rod with lightning speed and the rod turned into a full arc. Woah!

I felt three big thumping headshakes as the fish ran off on the first run. Before I could even control the fish, it had already run into Eli’s line to my right. We were both fishing with braid and this turned into the scariest fight I had in a long time. My nerves were a big mess as I tried to play the fish gingerly to avoid any extreme rubbing of our tangled braids. In the dark, it was difficult to determine which line was over and which line was under, especially when the intersecting point was way out far. As if this was not difficult enough, my easing of the fight allowed the fish to run into Michael’s line. Now we had 2 lines of 50lb braid crossed with a 30lb mono. My chance of landing this fish looked more bleak by the second. Fortunately, the gentle hand on the rod helped to bring the fish close to shore rather successfully. With the tangle within headlamp illumination range, Eli and I managed to free our respective line. Michael’s line was still crossed with mine, but at least now I had more control of the fish. We were still wondering if this was a big channel catfish at this point since the fish did not jump and I couldn’t really feel the fight as well with the tangled line. Eli grabbed the net and got ready. He soon sound excited when he had first to glimpse the shark like tail of the sturgeon. With a little bit of tricky maneuvering of two lines, we finally had the sturgeon in the purse.

As soon as the fish was landed, I said to Michael and Eli “After seeing the shooting stars all I said was ‘Lake Sturgeon, Lake Sturgeon’. Unreal!!!”

Truly, I am not a very superstitious person, and wishing upon a star was often done humourously. As if catching a Lake Sturgeon was not spectacular enough, I managed to “wish” up my first sturgeon with double shooting stars. This made the catch even more unbelievable as this magical circumstance was likely once-in-a-lifetime, happily-ever-after fairy tale!





Stardust Sturgeon…my first Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens)…species #275 with a story to be told for a lifetime. This was a long time dream come true...ever since DanTheMan and Rocky posted their awesome Lake Sturgeon catches!





Simply, simply unbelievable…speechless…jaw dropped…





Yeah, we also caught a lot of channel catfish, a few nice silver redhorse, a couple of walleye and even a couple of burbot!












But for me the Lake Sturgeon takes the cake!

And new species from Michael!!!

Silver Redhorse (It's okay Michael, the background is generic enough )





Walleye





Yellow Bullhead





Burbot





Plus lots of Channel Catfish by him too.