Scott Jaenicke and his buddy, Steve Ross, had gotten an early start fishing walleyes Monday morning on Lake of the Woods, and they were just about to head back to shore for a break.
Fishing in about 12 feet of water near Rocky Point, they'd landed five nice "eater-sized" walleyes, Jaenicke recalls, when his bobber went down about an inch.
That's when the real fun began; Jaenicke had a battle on his hands, and it wasn't an eater-sized walleye.
"It started ripping drag, and I thought it was a northern," Jaenicke, 40, Greenbush, Minn., said. "I just couldn't stop it."
As good fortune would have it, Jaenicke had spooled his reel with new, 8-pound Spider Wire a week earlier and had just retied his jig before the bobber went down.
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"I had about 150 yards of line on my spool, and when it stopped, I had maybe 20 yards left," Jaenicke said. "I tightened my drag as much as I could.
"I almost ran out of line twice."
Whatever was swimming at the end of Jaenicke's line also managed to tangle the lines in Ross's portable house about 15 yards away. Not that it really mattered. Playing a fish like this is about as close as fishing gets to a spectator sport anyway, so Ross, of Roseau, Minn., ran over to check out the action.
"It had all his rods and lines so they were coming up with the fish," Jaenicke said. "I told my buddy Steve, 'What am I supposed to do?' He said, 'Don't lose it -- it has all of my equipment.'"
About 15 minutes into the battle they decided the fish probably was a sturgeon. Not even big pike fight like this, after all. When it finally appeared at the bottom of the hole after 35 minutes, the suspicion was confirmed.
It was a sturgeon, alright -- a huge sturgeon.
"To see something that big ... it looked like a shark," Jaenicke said. "Just the girth of it was unbelievable."
There's not much room for error when landing a big fish but Ross was able to reach down and hook the sturgeon in the mouth with a gaff so they could pull it up the hole.
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"As far as he fought and as long as he fought, I thought the jig would be just buried," Jaenicke said. "And it took me probably half a second to get the hook out.
"I was going, 'Are you kidding me?'"
Jaenicke measured the fish at 70 inches. He didn't get a weight because his scale only went up to 30 pounds but estimates the sturgeon weighed somewhere between 60 pounds and 70 pounds.
"He wasn't really that fat," Jaenicke said. "I mix feed a lot because I'm a turkey farmer, and I carry a lot of 50-pound bags. This was way more than that."
Whatever the weight, it was a lot of fish to catch on a small ice fishing rod with 8-pound test line through an 8-inch hole in the ice.
They freed Ross's lines and bobbers, snapped a quick photo and put the fish back down the hole. Keeping it wasn't an option because the harvest season for sturgeon on Lake of the Woods and other Minnesota-Canada border waters isn't open again until late April. And even when harvest season is open, the regulations only allow anglers to keep sturgeon measuring 45 inches to 50 inches or longer than 75 inches in length.
Jaenicke, who laughed when asked if his arms were sore, said the fish quickly swam away when they steered it back down the hole.
"It only took him probably 30 seconds to slap his tail once we got him in the water, and he just shot away," Jaenicke said. "I told (Steve), I said, 'That was a one-in-a-million fish.'
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"It was quite the ordeal."
Dokken reports on outdoors. Reach him at (701) 780-1148; (800) 477-6572, ext. 148; or send e-mail to bdokken@gfherald.com .
