Catch just short of master angler status

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This article was published 27/03/2018 (2976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reeling in an almost 43-inch sturgeon from a hole in the frozen Assiniboine River on Sunday evening, Dustin Knapp came within a half-inch of achieving his goal.

Intent on reeling in a master angler-class fish, Knapp was on his 10th day in a row on the Assiniboine River when he caught the fish at approximately 8 p.m. —three hours after first dropping a line into the water.

The fish was caught just south of Brandon’s Kirkcaldy Heights School.

Prior to that, Knapp caught a 24-inch sturgeon early on in his 10-day run, but remained determined to get his master angler, experimenting with different baits as he went along.

While he came slightly short of achieving the master angler fish he sought, Knapp said the experience still made for a thrilling evening on the river, and was the longest fish he’d ever reeled in.

“I had so much excitement going through my body I couldn’t sleep (Sunday) night,” he said while recalling the scene on Monday.

It was quite the juxtaposition against most fishing trips on the Assiniboine River, he said, in that the majority of attempts end up with no fish to show for it, during which coffee becomes a necessity for staying awake.

The bait he used on his most-successful 10th day included a concentration of ground-up minnows, though Knapp is leaving the exact makeup of his bait his personal secret.

While his sturgeon was less than an inch away from meeting its 43-inch master angler status, Knapp was still proud of his river haul, which came in less than an inch smaller than his six-year-old son, Everett Matheson.

The Brandon Sun has reported on a few large sturgeon coming out of the Assiniboine River in recent years, which is considered good news for a species that was considered extricated until 1996.

Last year, VanBi Le caught a 27-pound sturgeon in the river’s Wheat City stretch, and in 2005 Sebastion Pulak and Mac Mulligan spent 45 minutes wrestling a 51.5-inch lake sturgeon to shore along the Assiniboine River.

According to Manitoba Master Angler program records online, at anglers.travelmanitoba.com, Rick Roziere caught the largest-recorded Assiniboine River sturgeon on Oct. 22, 2017, when he took in a 53-inch fish.

Given the fish’s 1996 reintroduction to the Assiniboine River, the majority of the large sturgeon catches on record have occurred in the past few years.

Prior to 1996, sturgeon had not been seen in the river for decades. That year, the provincial government began stocking fry in the river as part of the province’s hatchery program.

Last year, manager of fisheries science and fish culture with Sustainable Development Manitoba, Jeff Long, said that fish in the Assiniboine River appeared to be growing at a faster rate than average as a result of warm temperatures and the waterway’s wealth of nutrients.

Sturgeon don’t reach sexual maturity until they reach an age of between 16 and 20, which points to the importance of the species’ catch and release-only status.

Knapp said that he did just this, and that after his friend Joel Janzen took a few pictures of him with the sturgeon, it was released back into the river.

As exciting as catching Sunday’s sturgeon was, Knapp said he’s still intent on reeling in a master angler-class fish, and would continue to fish the Assiniboine River in search of one of these elusive sturgeon.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB