Willamette River just below Oregon City.

This Sturgeon was caught on the Willamette River just below Oregon City two weeks ago. It weighed out at over 1,000 lbs and measured out at 11'1". It was 56" around the girth and took over 6 and a half hours, and 4 dozen beers, for the 4 guys taking turns at the reeling it in.
Any Sturgeon OVER about five feet has to be released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water.
They are brood / breeding stock and probably older than most of us.

OMG!!!!! Now that's what you call a fish...LOL...

Wow, that's one huge fish in my book.

Wow!! that's huge sturgeon!

I think that fish has lived up there under the falls and around that immediate area for quite a few years. I think many people have hooked up with her and lost the battle. I remember hearing stories all the time of the huge Sturgeon up there at the falls. There are a few big one's up there. Probably not as big as her, but in the 8 foot range.

Years ago my friend Wayne, who was a firefighter I worked with for 17 years, caught one up at Bonneville Dam in the Columbia river. They fought that fish until way after dark and towed her into Barney Barstad's moorage just to measure her. That fish was 14 feet long. In all the years that I fished for Sturgeon down there I brought one up to the side of the boat and was able to measure it at 10 feet long. I had two others on that were much bigger and after watching them jump a couple of times, just cut the line. I did catch a 7-1/2 foot fish once and brought her into the boat. That was a bad mistake. She wiped the seats right off of the floor and did a lot of other damage. The reason that I brought her into the boat was that Covert's Landing had a permit to keep oversize fish for their hatchery program they had going at the time. But as it turned out they couldn't use her and I put her back into the river. That was a job and a half just getting her back out of the boat again.

The legal limit on Sturgeon in Oregon used to be any fish between 3 and 6 feet. Then it changed to any fish between 4 and 6 feet, and I don't know what the limit is now.

Jim