Fishing sturgeons at parc Cite du Havre

With the kids off school, I decided to take them out for some local shore fishing. I've seen people fishing Parc Cite du Havre for sturgeon in the past, so after doing a bit of research, I decided to give it a try.

In addition to my standard carping / catfishing rod which is a 6.5 foot medium action, fitted with a 40 series baitrunner reel spooled with 50 lb Power Pro, I took along a stiff / heavy action 7 foot catfish rod, fitted with a 50 series reel spooled with 65 lb Power Pro. I also picked up some 6 ounce puck sinkers which I used to rig wormballs on a 3/0 wide gap hook sliding sinker setup.

Got to my spot at about 10:00 AM, joined a bunch of locals for some elbow to elbow fishing, definitely not my favorite type of fishing conditions. Within 30 minutes, I had my first hit. I set the hook and thought it was a big clump of weeds until I reeled in a 3 lb redhorse sucker. As these waters contain the rare copper redhorse, all suckers in the area must be released, so I revived and released it after snapping a shot of it.


About 45 minutes later, my older son's baitrunner goes off, he hooks and lands a 1 lb smallmouth bass.

My 2 younger ones weren't enjoying the outing much, as they kept getting stuck in the rocks due to the fast current. By noon, they both had enough, so I was forced to leave early to take them home.

Not wanting to waste the rest of the day, I headed right back out to another spot with my older son, figured we would attempt another try at catching either sturgeon or channel cats. We setup the heavier rod with a wormball, and the Rhino with a dead minnow. Sure enough, after about 1 hour, the heavier rods starts bouncing lightly, I figured it was probably a small panfish going after the worm. I set the hook just to be sure. I thought I hooked the bottom, until it started moving...Fish on!

This fish had my broomstick like catfish rod bent over almost to the halfway point, I figured it must be a sturgeon or really big channel catfish. Turn out to be a 32 inch / 7 lb sturgeon, really a lot smaller than I thought. I guess these fish a extremely powerful, especially in fast current. I've hooked fish double that size in the same place, they didn't put up half the fight this one did. We snapped some pics and released it in good health.


We now set up the other rod with a worm ball as well. Sure enough, after about another hour, the rod starts twitching, and my son calls out that it's "his fish". OK, I pass him the rod, he sets, stats reeling and tells me there's nothing on, until he realizes he's got a lethargic rock bass that swallowed his setup.

We set up again, but the strong winds blowing cold air off the river right at us force us to leave by 4:00 PM with no more bites.

Anyway, this sturgeon fishing has me pumped up now, as I can only imagine what it would be like to hook into a mid size or big one as opposed to the "baby" I caught.