The Fraser Valley: “Mighty Hawg” Daytripper

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by BCAA in BC

Coming face-to-whiskers with a Fraser River leviathan: B.C.’s prehistoric sturgeon

by Masa Takei

We’re going fishing, as simple and primal a thing as that. We’re also on a National Geographic-worthy outing, a scientific mission for conservation, a veritable journey back in time. It’s a prehistoric creature that we seek – a living dinosaur, but one faced with imminent extinction.

The Fraser River's sturgeon population ’s is the largest truly wild stock of this species left in the world. Even so, the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society estimates the latter’s numbers have plunged by 25 per cent.

Casting lines from the dock at B.C.’s Harrison Lake, our guide fires up the engine on our seven-metre aluminum jet boat and sets course for the mouth of the Harrison River, just 110 km east of Vancouver. A few raindrops spatter the windshield from low, heavy clouds; tendrils of mist drape the flanks of the surrounding Coast Mountains. “A month ago we’d be able to fish right here,” says 39-year-old Tony Nootebos, who has guided on these waters for the past 14 years. But this late fall afternoon, we don’t even slow our pace as we reach the river mouth and head inland.

The beast we are in search of, the white sturgeon, is North America’s largest freshwater fish. (The biggest caught to date was more than six metres long and weighed 600-plus kilos – about the length and payload capacity of a Ford F-150 pickup.) It’s a species that has plied these waters for more than 60 million years, virtually unchanged. Something that has withstood Darwinian forces throughout the millennia would suggest a robustness of design. Yet within the last century, the sturgeon’s numbers have dropped toward extirpation, mainly due to habitat degradation and overfishing. In 1897, almost a half-million kilograms of sturgeon were pulled from the Fraser River in a single year by the 160 gillnetters licensed to do so. By the mid-1900s, the numbers of these inland-water leviathans had dropped so precipitously that only two local commercial fishing licenses remained active. Given a decades-long maturation period, the remaining sturgeon stock has slim hope of fully recovering.

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The old black-and-white photo makes it easy to believe

creatures of such size existed only in another era. Just four

years ago, though, another group of fishermen caught a

specimen measuring 3.3 metres in the Fraser near Mission,

where it took four men six-and-a-half hours to land the goliath.

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One 1920s shot in the B.C. archives shows 30 men in tweed suits and waistcoats, posing on a dock with a sturgeon laid across packing crates. If the crates were standard issue, then the sturgeon was some four-and-a-half metres long. The old black-and-white photo makes it easy to believe creatures of such size existed only in another era. Just four years ago, though, another group of fishermen caught a specimen measuring 3.3 metres in the Fraser near Mission, where it took four men six-and-a-half hours to land the goliath. A colour photo subsequently ran in the local newspaper, a classic grip-and-grin shot of 10 fishermen standing in a river to support one fish on the surface.

We motor the length of the Harrison River, our wake in the dark jade waters lingering behind us like an airliner’s contrail. A seal colony lounging atop a log boom eyes us as we speed past. Nootebos points to hundreds of dots in the distance: bald eagles fishing on the river ahead. The photographer in our group throws off his fleece and readies his gear. The only other passenger, a woman from Montreal sheathed in a stylish corduroy coat, designer jeans and gumboots, fishes in her handbag for her point-and-shoot.

My pole arcs, pulled down like a divining rod to the motherlode. Line peels out of the reel with a frantic zzz-z-zzzzz. I haul up and reel in, jolted with adrenaline as I get a feel for the size and strength of the creature I’m now attached to.

Concentrations of North America’s last white sturgeon exist in rivers located primarily on the west coast. The Columbia and Snake rivers in the U.S. and the Fraser and Harrison in B.C. are the last sport fisheries; the Fraser’s is the largest truly wild stock of sturgeon left in the world. Even so, the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society estimates the latter’s numbers have plunged by 25 per cent, from somewhere around 62,000 in 2003 to about 47,000 in 2006. The most disturbing statistic, however, is that the greatest drop is among juveniles, suggesting that the population is failing to renew itself.

Today, sturgeon fishing on the Fraser is strictly catch-and-release, while commercial guiding services play a significant role in both stewardship and a tagging program that gathers population stats. “The sport fishery is the eyes and ears on the river,” says Nootebos – and it’s a well-motivated crowd, given that commerce and conservation are inextricably linked. With 90 guides in the area, the industry contributes an estimated $20 million to the B.C. economy.

Arriving at the wide, muddy Fraser, Nootebos finds the spot he’s looking for, kills the engine and lets the boat drift while he produces a plastic bucket of fluorescent-orange salmon roe encased in a nylon stocking. Taking a barbless fish hook the size of his thumb, he nips the top of a sac and, swivelling crane-like with the 2.5-metre fishing rod, casts the bait bomb out across the surface of the river. I picture the orange orb settling on the riverbed, a beacon in the murk. But it is the roe’s sweetish scent and taste that will lure the sturgeon, which has poor eyesight and relies on a keen sense of smell and taste to feed.

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Reports claim a half-bushel of onions,

a can of beans and a house cat found in the

stomachs of sturgeon catch.

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It was a Canadian researcher who discovered that sturgeon have taste buds outside their mouths (sensitive barbels – four catfish-like whiskers that project from the snout – are used to probe the river bottom for food). The gentle creature is, in fact, a toothless scavenger that spends its days sucking up relatively small protein packets – as Nootebos puts it, like “hoovers vacuuming the bottom.” Lamprey eels, eulachon, ditch eels, crayfish and dead salmon parts are regular fare. Just about anything is inhaled, though. Reports claim a half-bushel of onions, a can of beans and a house cat found in the stomachs of sturgeon catch.

Nootebos baits two more hooks and mounts three rods in holders at the back of the boat. Each of us is assigned our own entry in this lottery. And so it begins.

Our lines out, we wait. The day’s drizzle lends an air of solemnity. We monitor the tips of our respective rods expectantly. But as the minutes pass, our short attention spans are sadly apparent when Nootebos points to two rods now quivering with the nibblings of beasts below. There’s a moment of indecisive panic before two of us leap to pull rods from holders, then lean back to set the hooks: throwing the heavy rods back hard as coached, striving for purchase in the hard, cartilaginous mouths beneath us.

My pole arcs, pulled down like a divining rod to the motherlode. Line peels out of the reel with a frantic zzz-z-zzzzz. Next to me, Montreal also has a battle on her hands. Nootebos takes in the other line, then restarts the boat to orient it favourably for the work ahead. I haul up and reel in, jolted with adrenaline as I get a feel for the size and strength of the creature I’m now attached to. A few metres of line are gained, then the fish is off; nothing to do but let it run. Suddenly, a shudder, then . . . nothing. I reel in slack, hoping it’s just that the sturgeon is swimming straight for us. The hook comes back to the boat bare.

The sturgeon has no teeth, but I pause before grabbing its lower lip – a good 15 centimetres wide – with both hands. It feels rubbery but solid, and, with a leg either side, I embrace this living log. It appears calmed by the unfamiliar experience of floating upside down.

Meanwhile, Montreal is huffing and puffing. She’s hooked onto something big. Nootebos straps a fighting belt around her waist, a white-plastic affair with a cup to brace the butt of the rod. Stylish turquoise-leather gloves strain as she struggles with a force many times heavier than she. The fight draws out. Nootebos, a sheepish look on his face, leans in to support the rod, one hand beneath its centre point like he’s doing a bicep curl. Montreal’s exclamations are no longer self-conscious theatrics. She lets out childbirth-worthy groans.

The photographer and I guffaw like a couple of knuckleheads. Nootebos takes the rod from Montreal and passes it to me; 15 minutes later, I’m eating crow. A lactic burn sears through my arms as I calculate the cost of replacing the thousand-dollar rod and reel about to slip overboard. The photographer steps in and puts in his time. Soon, he too is looking for takers.

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Nootebos grabs the pole, clamps his thumb down on the

spool of the reel and cranks up hard on the rod, taking in line

by the armload. A massive flash of white suddenly churns

the water alongside, bigger than anything we’d imagined.

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The second pass around, we hit upon an ingenious way to double-team the beast: facing each other, one with the rod in both hands, the other propping it up on one shoulder. Embarrassed though he might be for us, Nootebos runs for his camera. Yet despite our chicanery, the fish seems nowhere near as tired as us. Nootebos grabs the pole, clamps his thumb down on the spool of the reel and cranks up hard on the rod, taking in line by the armload. A massive flash of white suddenly churns the water alongside, bigger than anything we’d imagined. Reinvigorated, we resume the fight, alternately reeling in line and letting the fish run. Finally, we bring it up from the deep.

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Its snout out of the water,

the sturgeon regards us with a tiny,

baleful, blue-grey eye.

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Its snout out of the water, the sturgeon regards us with a tiny, baleful, blue-grey eye. We’ve been wrestling with the fish for more than an hour and have drifted almost three km downriver. I strip off my down jacket and stuff myself into waders. By the time I get overboard, Nootebos has removed the hook and is holding the colossus by the mouth, belly up in knee-deep waters. I take over while he jumps back aboard for a measuring tape. The sturgeon has no teeth, but I pause before grabbing its lower lip – a good 15 centimetres wide – with both hands. It feels rubbery but solid, and, with a leg either side, I embrace this living log. It appears calmed by the unfamiliar experience of floating upside down. We measure from snout to tail fork (252 cm), then the girth (102 cm). Nootebos’s guess is 140 to 180 kg – less than half the weight of the monster caught four years ago but still the heft of a Shetland pony.

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Nootebos returns with a Sharpie-sized syringe

loaded with an electronic tag. Sliding the tip of the

needle into the skin behind the sturgeon’s

head, he depresses the plunger.

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Producing a Trekkie-looking, paddle-headed device, Nootebos flips the sturgeon upright and scans behind its head: an untagged virgin. Again, he leaves me holding the fish’s maw. I study the mottled purple, pink and grey back, marked by a line of white ridges. These must be the scutes – armoured plates girding its flanks. A sudden squirming. I clamp tighter with both shins. Nootebos returns with a Sharpie-sized syringe loaded with an electronic tag. Sliding the tip of the needle into the skin behind the sturgeon’s head, he depresses the plunger, then checks with the reader that the tag is operational. Our work is done.

Then it comes, the obligatory grip-and-grin. Nootebos and I kneel in the water to support a creature that weighs more than both of us put together. Montreal looks on, smiling, from the boat. We grip, we grin, as the photographer captures the image for posterity, then release our connection to a primeval time. With a flip of the tail, it glides back into the Fraser’s murky depths.

sturgeon generals

B.C. Sportfishing Group offers eight-hour guided fishing daytrips for four people at $796, four-hour trips for $518. Everything (including waders and fishing gear) is included; guests need only dress for the weather. With 22 boats, BCSFG can accommodate up to 88 guests at one time – year-round (peak season is April to November). 1-877-796-3345

Photos courtesy Darryl Leniuk

Tags: B.C., B.C. Daytrips, Catch-and-Release, Fishing, Fraser Valley, Sturgeon