‘Sturgeon Slayers’ celebrate record-setting catch

A local guiding company has reeled in one of the largest white sturgeon ever recorded, highlighting a species that's been quietly making a comeback.

There are plenty of fish in B.C.’s Fraser River, but just one that is catching the attention of the local angling community.

The Chilliwack-based fishing guide group Sturgeon Slayers is making waves after a recent excursion turned up their biggest catch yet.

“Once we got the second tape measure out, we knew we had something special,” founder Kevin Estrada told CTV News.

Estrada has spent nearly 20 years guiding groups on the Fraser River, where he says “you just never know what that next bite could be.”

The next bite ended up being a really big one, when he was out with a group of corporate clients on June 4.

They caught, tagged and released a white sturgeon measuring 11 feet long (an 8.2-foot fork length), with a 60-inch pectoral girth, which Estrada believes is a world record for a white sturgeon caught on rod and reel.

The catch, estimated to weigh about 1,200 pounds, also broke a previous record that the group set in 2021.

They believe the sturgeon, which took about 40 minutes to reel in, is more than a century old, but say an exact age is harder to measure.

“As they get older, it’s very hard. The rings grow in like tree rings, and it’s very hard to identify the age,” Estrada said.

“The most common question I get is how old is that fish, and the reality is we don’t know.”

According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the white sturgeon is the largest and longest-living freshwater fish in North America, with a history that dates back 200 million years.

Estrada says the biggest threat facing the ancient species are nets used to capture salmon, which have a “47 per cent mortality rate” for entangled sturgeon.

But despite this, Estrada says decades of conservation work have been successful.

“We have a healthy and abundant fishery here in British Columbia,” he said. “We’ve never seen so many large fish.”

Calling it a positive news story for everybody, Estrada says “we have an iconic species here in B.C. that’s thriving.”