A fishing guide from Michigan was surf fishing on an Alabama beach when he hooked something big that puzzled onlookers about its identity. Even the angler was baffled, thinking a shark was at the end of the line.
Instead, when David A. Rose finally pulled the fish close to shore at Orange Beach after a 40-minute battle, he and the others discovered it was a Gulf sturgeon. It was a rare catch of the prehistoric fish, which is listed as “threatened.”
“Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined landing such a rare species…ever,” Rose told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. “While I knew there were anadromous sturgeon along the Northwest Coast, it never even crossed my mind there were this species swimming about the Gulf of Mexico.”
Rose, on vacation, had spent most of the week catching Gulf kingfish, croaker, stingrays, a 5-pound gafftopsail catfish, a pufferfish and a crab, according to MulletWrapper.com.
Then came his rare catch, using fresh dead shrimp as bait.
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“My first thought was I had hooked a shark; even after seeing the silhouette in the waves off the first break,” Rose told For The Win Outdoors. “A few minutes later, when its back broke the surface, an onlooker—who obviously knew a little something about fish, and fishing—and I both glanced at each other with a puzzled look and said out loud in unison, `a sturgeon?’ I had no idea there were sturgeon in here!”
The Gulf sturgeon measured more than 6 feet and weighed an estimated 120 to 130 pounds. After some quick photos in the surf, Rose released the federally protected sturgeon with help from the onlooker, one of about 100 who had stopped to watch.
Gulf sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi) dates back in the fossil record, unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. They get to be rather large (up to 14 feet), so this was likely a young adult fish. Their internal skeleton is made of cartilage, much like a shark. However, much of their head and outer body is covered with bony plates, almost armor-like. Despite their bulk, they are noted for occasionally jumping out of the water. And boaters have been injured by that. But they are otherwise harmless.
“By far, this is the rarest of rare catches for me, as well my largest catch to date,” Rose told For The Win Outdoors. “In my home state, the lake sturgeon is an endangered species, but every so often you hear of someone landing one in the inland and Great Lakes. This fish was definitely the proverbial needle in the haystack.”
Photos courtesy of Carol Rose.
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