Fishing the Forks (Thur.)

[Dale S]

Hit the forks this morning fished for 4 hours 1 small sturgeon 1 sauger and suckers. I fished beside a research team from the gov. of Ab. They were fishing for sturgeon to tag and implant radio transmitters. Will there they landed a sturgeon 61in.long 22in girth and weighed 14.8 kg. Around 25 years old .After taking all the measurements they put it to sleep. They then cut out a peice of one of her fins to get an accurate age. And right on the beach made a 2 in. incision in the belly area and implanted a black capsule (radio transmitter 2in. by 1in.) inside the cavity'.And with 4 stiches she was revived and released.

[the local angler]

very cool

[dodger]

Nice post, the story and pics are great.
Dodger.

[WayneChristie]

thanks for sharing.

[tacklerunner]

very cool

x 2

[pecker]

interesting-- very-- interesting . thanks for sharing.:)

[Alberta Bigbore]

how long does the whole process take once caught?

[TyreeUM]

depends on how quickly you can tie a surgeon's knot. I think my fastest time for a D cell battery sized tag was 6 minutes after the fish was anaesthetized - those tags require a lot more than 4 stitches though.

[Dale S]

I'm thinking it was back in the river in 20 minutes.The team handled the fish very professionally. In the one pic. you can see the bottle he used to poor water over the gills during the procedure.Or the fish was in a tub of river water 90% of the time.

[Fishfinder]

Neato! Would have been interesting to watch for sure. Sure is a skinny sturg for her length IMO. Caught a nice 55.5" yesterday around the Hat and she seemed twice as fat!
What were the fish bios chucking out there for bait...am curious?

Cheers n GL!:sign0087:

[BGSH]

what a blast, thats awsome, by the way doing that doesnt hurt the fish at all, nice specimen. thx for posting, great pictures.

[Dale S]

She does look skin,but the guy holding her is a big guy. I think they were using worms.They told me next week they were going to Lethbridge to fish. They had reports of tagged fish being caught there, that they tagged last year way down by the British Block. Have you caught any with tags in this year fishfinder, I've caught 3.We need to start a thread to record all the tag #s that AO members catch since none of there info. is available to the puplic. I'm sure over time we could figure out there patterns and movements.

[Fishfinder]

She does look skin,but the guy holding her is a big guy. I think they were using worms.They told me next week they were going to Lethbridge to fish. They had reports of tagged fish being caught there, that they tagged last year way down by the British Block. Have you caught any with tags in this year fishfinder, I've caught 3.We need to start a thread to record all the tag #s that AO members catch since none of there info. is available to the puplic. I'm sure over time we could figure out there patterns and movements.

Good idea.
I haven't caught any with tags yet this year, that being said, I've only caught 8...so far. I also usually try and check others sturg for tags if they don't mind, and haven't seen any, musta checked around a 100 sturg this spring already. Weird, suppose it's a good thing though? Good mix of small and large. I think/hope the population is doing fine?:)
Buddy however caught 1 tagged one. Phoned info in to Lethbridge FnW whom tagged it in the first place.