Monster 1,100 Pound Fish Caught in Canada

Monster 1,100 Pound Fish Caught in Canada

A humungous white sturgeon weighing approximately 1,100 pounds and measuring 12 feet, 4 inches was caught and released on the Fraser River, a British Columbia waterway famous for its big sturgeons.

Catches of white sturgeon averaging 30 to 100 pounds are typical on the Fraser, even an occasional 250-pounder, but nothing as huge as this sturgeon, which is believed to be the biggest freshwater fish ever caught on rod and reel in North America, and possibly the oldest.
"I've been a professional guide on the Fraser for 25 years and I've never seen a sturgeon this big," said Dean Werk, owner/guide of Great Fishing Adventures.

"We have helped to collectively tag more than 47,000 white sturgeons since 1995, and scanned in excess of 90,000 tagged sturgeons that have been caught and released. This tells us this dinosaur fish hasn't been caught in at least 18 years if ever at all. I'd bet she's over 100 years old."

Incredibly, this massive sturgeon, a prehistoric species, might have been hatched the year the Titanic sank.

Michael Snell, 65, of Salisbury, England, who was fishing with his wife, Margaret, called the catch a fish of a lifetime.  "It is the most excitement I've ever had with a fish," said Snell, who took 1 1/2 hours to eventually land the fish along the shoreline. "It all happened so quickly. When we picked her head up out of the water, it was almost three-feet wide. I never knew a fish could be that large."

By comparison, the world record for a white sturgeon is 468 pounds taken in Benicia, Calif., according to the 2012 International Game Fish Association book of World Record Game Fishes.

Since Great River Fishing Adventures, like many others on the river, are into conservation and preserving these incredible creatures, the fish was released alive, so weighing it was impossible.  The estimated weight was based on charts created by the Fraser River Conservation Society using girth and length measurements. A similar chart for marlin gave the same estimate.

Thus, this massive fish, with a girth of 53 inches, won't ever become an official world record since IGFA requires a record fish to be weighed on a certified scale.  Nevertheless, it'll be quite an experience for Snell and his wife. 

Posted by Andre Monohan on Sunday July 29 2012, 3:15 AM EDT. Ref: Yahoo. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0