Back in April, a North Dakota angler traveled to Minnesota and broke the state’s catch-and-release record for lake sturgeon. Travis Keating’s giant sturgeon measured 6.6-feet long (longer than the angler himself) with a girth of 38 inches. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), the fish weighed more than 160 pounds.
Keating was on an annual sturgeon fishing trip with a group of close friends when he hooked the record-breaking fish. He was fishing the Rainy River in Lake of the Woods County, which flows out of the Boundary Waters.
“An Hour of Pure Chaos”
“On April 18, a bitter cold front had moved in overnight, bringing 40-plus mph wind gusts and wind chills hovering around 5 below zero,” MDNR reported in a May 4th press release. “Fishing was a grind. Anchored in Four Mile Bay for nearly eight hours, the crew battled relentless wind and cold, managing seven smaller sturgeon.”
With evening approaching, Keating decided to head for the mouth of the Rainy River, a known hotspot for giant lake sturgeon, especially in spring. When the sturgeon hit, his rod “doubled over, nearly touching the water.” Keating described the fight as “an hour of pure chaos” with the fish finally surfacing near the boat.
“Getting the fish in the boat was such a surreal moment that I just couldn’t wrap my head around it,” he said. “Now looking back, [I] still can’t believe I was the one to catch the fish and can’t wait to get back and try to top it!”
Keating told MDNR that the sturgeon is the biggest fish he’s ever caught. Lake sturgeon are catch-and-release only in Minnesota. The agency doesn’t recommend weighing them for record consideration. Instead biologists used a “length-girth-weight relationship” chart to estimate the fish’s weight at an astonishing 165 pounds. At that size, Keating’s lake sturgeon was likely 100 years old or older.
Lake sturgeon have rebounded in the Rainy River after years of overfishing in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “With the passage of clean water legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially the Clean Water Act of 1972, the sturgeon population started to recover, as water quality and habitat conditions improved,” the press release states. “Now reproduction is successful in most years.”
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Minnesota’s previous catch-and-release record for lake sturgeon measured 78.5 inches with a smaller 29.5-inch girth. MDNR estimated that 2019 fish at roughly 120 pounds, a full 45 pounds lighter than Keating’s. The International Gamefish Association last recorded an all-tackle world record for lake sturgeon in May, 1982. That fish weighed 168 pounds. Angler Edward Paszkowski caught it in the Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada on a Mepps Algia #3 spinner.
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