Watch: Angler beyond impressed as 9-foot sturgeon leaps from river
A woman fishing last week on the Fraser River outside of Vancouver, Canada, hooked a 9-foot sturgeon whose ferocious leap was caught on video.
In the footage, Steevie Zdebiak, while struggling against the weight of the massive fish, expresses her disbelief as the airborne sturgeon attempts to shake the hook. (The video, best viewed with sound, contains mild profanity.)
Guide Yves Bisson described the Aug. 1 battle as “insane” and told FTW Outdoors that the sturgeon’s splashdown soaked the anglers and the fish “almost landed in the boat.”
It was the second time in three weeks that a white sturgeon measuring nearly 10 feet propelled so much of its body out of the water during a Yves Bisson Sturgeon Co. charter.
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Zdebiak’s husband, Rob, hooked another giant sturgeon at the same time. Bisson, however, focused his camera on Steevie and her fish.
“All heck broke loose,” he said. “It was crazy that we hooked two at once that size and landed them. Both were over 300 pounds and one was over 8 feet, and the other over 9 feet.”
Both fish were carefully released.
White sturgeon can measure 12-plus feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds. The fish date to prehistoric times and have been described as “living dinosaurs.”