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Norman,
OK -- At Lake Erie, there’s no telling what you’ll catch when you lower your lure onto a prime piece of structure. Smallmouths, walleyes, sheepsheads, perch and drum can all sit on the same little rockpile.
So when Dave Wolak tied into a monster fish during practice, he wasn’t exactly surprised – until the beast sounded and nearly scared him back to the dock.
He was fishing about a mile outside the mouth of the river under extremely rough conditions and ended up getting seasick, so he headed back behind a breakwall to get his equilibrium back in order. Once he got settled, he headed back out and started graphing a break.
While Wolak has landed big sharks in saltwater, and once had an 800 pound mako up to the boat, the sturgeon was his largest freshwater catch to date, greatly exceeding the salmon that previously held that title.
“I showed the picture (on my phone) to everybody. I was really proud that I landed it.”
I saw some marks on the graph and they looked big,” he said.
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He dropped down a 3 ½ inch tube and got “the most distinctive bite” he’d ever felt.
“I thought it was a big smallmouth,” he said. “But when it came up it looked like a shark. I immediately knew it was a sturgeon. It just kept dogging and dogging and it jumped four times.”
He was using 8 pound test Sunline Sniper fluorocarbon, so he had to play the fish gingerly, but he eventually got the brute to the boat. He wanted to get a picture of this catch of a lifetime, but he had to find someone to help him handle it.
“I saw several guys run by, but no one was close enough to help me,” Wolak remembered. “I was moving so fast I was about to go under the Peace Bridge.”
But he was able to flag down fellow North Carolina resident Dustin
Wilks. While the first words out of
Wilks’ mouth were “I ain’t touching that thing,” between the two of them they managed to get the fish under control.
“I didn’t want to hurt it,” Wolak said. “A fish that big, six feet long, is about 80 years old.” For the record, the fish, which was hooked in the mouth, was released unharmed.
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