'All heck breaks loose' as husband, wife battle massive sturgeon

A woman fishing last week on the Fraser River outside of Vancouver, Canada, hooked a 9-foot sturgeon whose mighty leap was caught on video.

In the accompanying footage (best viewed with sound), Steevie Zdebiak, while struggling against the weight of the massive fish, laughs in disbelief as the sturgeon leaps almost clear of the surface.

Guide Yves Bisson described the Aug. 1 outing as “insane” and told FTW Outdoors that the sturgeon’s splashdown soaked the anglers and the fish “almost landed in the boat.”

Perhaps as remarkable was that Zdebiak’s husband, Rob, hooked a different sturgeon of similar size at the same time so two epic fights involving  prehistoric-looking “river monsters” occurred simultaneously.

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“All heck broke loose,” Bisson, owner of Yves Bisson Sturgeon Co., 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.”

Only Steevie jumped in to pose with the sturgeon before they were unhooked and allowed to swim free. (White sturgeon cannot be harvested on the Lower Fraser River).

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.”