One of my employees has been fishing a pier consistently for the past 2 months. Every day before work he would fill me in on his results. I noticed a pattern developing where they would catch multiple sturgeon on days with a huge plus tide. So I picked a day that would have a big plus tide and decided to give it a try.

My friend, my fiancee, my newborn and I set up on the pier around 6 PM. We sat down and started shooting the shit, paying little attention to our poles and more attention to the conversation and the beer cooler. After an hour of letting our bait soak, my friend decided to check his bait. "I got something!" he said to everyones surprise. Lo' and behold, a Sturgeon had hooked itself. We walked the sturgeon around the pier and brought him to the beach and pulled him out to snap a few pictures. We estimated that he measured around 36inches.



We returned to the end of the pier where our poles were. I looked around and could only count 4 of the 5 poles we had in the water. Perplexed, I looked around. A shady group of people had pulled up to the pier and setup on the far side while we were fighting the sturgeon. Convinced that my 5th pole had been stolen, I wandered over to the group to see if they had my pole. I looked, but could not find it. I ran to the parking lot to see if I could catch anyone loading up my pole into their car. Alas, the parking lot was empty. Conceding to defeat, I returned to the end of the pier. As I approached, I noticed my friend had a pole bent over double that obviously had a Sturgeon on the end of the line. I ran up and noticed it was the missing pole.....

"Your not going to believe it," my friend said, "I went to check my pole and I felt a fish pulling on the end of it. I reeled it in, but when I got to my leader, I had your pole hooked by the eye. So I grabbed that pole, and began fighting the fish again!"



The fish was just shy of legal at 44", but even if it was legal, I think I would have thrown it back on sheer principle... Crazyness!!!

Great report! Sounds like the tides are the key!