We managed to get out to the Columbia and catch a few. We planned to pull my buddies boat with my truck and leave his place by 5 am to make the trek out to Mayers State Park. We get there and realize we forgot the fish finder. Dang! No biggy. We'll try different spots until we find some hungry fish.
Fish at the mouth of the Klickitat for a bit with no action, so we move to another likely spot and discover He only had his short rope on the anchor from when we fished OC for shad. So we kept searching for likely spots and each time the anchor rope wasn't long enough. Finally get to a fishy looking area we had enough anchor rope to hold. We bait up and toss out. Nothing for about 30 minutes so we're scanning the area for the next likely spot. I eat a banana to hopefully disprove the bad luck BS of bananas on a boat. About that time my rod starts doing the typical sturgeon "I'm.....eating.....your......bait" bounce. The line suddenly starts peeling off the spool as the fish commits. I set the hook hard and tell my buddy it feels bigger than a shaker, probably a keeper. I'm reeling and it feels like a decent fish the suddenly the water erupts as a 10 to 11 foot Dinosaur breaches and we both look at each other like that kid in Home Alone when he puts the after shave on his face! I quickly grab the Gopro and hit the power button and toss it to my buddy to get some video if the fish hopefully breaches again.
I feel the power and weight of the fish now as the fish dives into the current. A few minutes into the fight it rewards us with another big breach. My buddy proclaims that he got that one on the video. Awesome! I finally get the fish subdued after a 30 minute tug of war. It's tail was too thick to get a grip on to keep along side the boat long enough for a photo. It was about 4 to 5 foot shorter than the 16' boat!! Exhausting fun
Now we're pretty pumped, thinking we were going to have some fun tugging in oversize sturgeon all day and hope to get a couple of keepers. Wishful thinking as we only caught shakers the rest of the day but all in all a good day with nice sunny "Texas" weather. I wanted to put up some video footage of the beast breaching but in the excitement, neither of us pushed the record button! Doh!! Ended up with only a phone pic.