Dragging sturgeons

Author Thomas Sintobin fished 2 weekends at Fishing Adventure in 2019

I don't like static fishing very much, nor do I like paywaters. And I'm not fond of self-hooking systems and I don't have enough time for multi-day sessions. And I hate having to drag mountains of equipment around. I look like the grumpy grump.... And yet last season I experienced something fantastic during a multi-day session of static fishing on a pay-water-in-waiting. Fishing from a tent, with boltrigs. And carrying a lot of gear that required me to go back and forth to the car three times.

The water concerns a very large sand excavation in Enschede, Fishing adventure. Ground had been mined here for many years, and a nice stock of mainly perch, pike and pike had developed naturally. However, sand mining could not go on forever and the owner thought it would be an interesting idea to turn this water into a fisherman's paradise after this work was stopped. Therefore, many years ago, he started skimming fish farms in search of big fish. And when I say big fish, I mean really big fish: carp of 15 kilograms, giant catfishand several sturgeon species going over two metres on stocking feet

In spring 2019, I received an invitation to spend two weekends fishing with a camera crew from the Belgian channel Rural TV, who have a programme on fishing. I put all my prejudices aside and decided to accept the invitation. Then again, it was a unique opportunity: after all, the water would not open to the general public until April 2020....

With big catfish I had quite a bit of experience, of course, but I had never caught a sturgeon before and I was not really familiar with fishing with pellets and big fish meal yet carp boilies. A visit to Fish Inn, and a long conversation with Rick later, I already knew much better how things worked. I had to have large pre-drilled halibut pellets, which were attached to the hair with an ingenious pin system.

The hookbait was encased in some kind of plastic mesh so that it could not swell and therefore remained intact for much longer. On the spools of my reels - Shimano Ultegra 14000 XTD - put Richard 350 metres of 25/00 braided line, and the hi-tech-looking mounts I could just grab ready-made from the racks... Helicopter rigs, hinged rigs, stiff links - all wonderful inventions from carp fishing that should work for sturgeon too....

Fair is fair: those two weekends flew by and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I fished in every possible way. From the bellyboat for catfish of course, with worms and quackwood and with softbaits. It soon turned out that these beasts here were real night owls, so I only took to the water at dusk to trudge around until I caught a big fish or until the battery of my electric motor ran down.

Two half nights yielded me five catfish, the largest being a bizarrely strong 199 cm fish.

I was genuinely happy to have a Float Plus was hanging under me because that beast was determined to water-ski me.

Two of the five fish were albinos! The by-catches were also nothing to sneeze at: not only did I catch a few nice pikeperch to around 75 cm, but also a real beluga sturgeon!

Possibly that was the very first beluga sturgeon ever caught from a bellyboat ...

Fishing buddy Maikel also hooked one but unfortunately it came loose during the drill. When I got tired of drifting around in the bellyboat, I would lay out my static rods on bite detectors so that I could blissfully sleep waiting for Things to Come. Funnily enough, we didn't get a single bite at night: the fish respected our sleep. In the early morning and in the afternoon, however, they did visit... The biggest static-caught catfish was for my buddy Bart and measured 180 cm.

The largest sturgeon was a diamond sturgeon of just under one and a half metres and fell in front of my rods. Ricky's pellet trick proved to work very well!

Actually, that whole set-up is brilliant. Every four hours or after every bite, we threw a kilogram of pellets around the hook. Those Coppens Giant Halibut pellets 28mm first soften underwater and then crumble, while the hook pellet remains intact. This means that your hookbait lies amidst a strong-smelling field of chunks of fishmeal pellets shining - or standing if you have a pop up used.

Small fish - and the lake is really swimming full of roach and blei - naturally come to feast on all those chunks, and their busy-ness then attracts the big fish. Last but not least, I also fished there with light tackle for the many perch and rudd chub that populated the riparian zones. I caught countless fish with the fly rod and nymphs, with popper and propellorbaits on the light spinning rod, and also casting with shads I recorded the necessary perch.

With the latter set-up, I experienced something incredible the last day, when I was wandering around a bit. In the shore zone, I saw a large beluga scurrying around. My heavy rods were hundreds of metres away and so, without thinking much about it, I threw a perch shad right in front of that fish's snout. He grabbed the lure immediately, and when I hooked on with my 15-gram spinning rod It continued to scurry along happily: it didn't seem to realise it was hooked! The drill took forever on that far too light material - I think I had about 120 metres of 10/00 Momoi lie on the reel -

But the fishing gods were with me and granted me my photo with this sturgeon

Have I now become a fan of paywaters? Certainly not, for that I love too much the feeling of infinity that the big rivers in the Netherlands give me. But I can see the charm of it better now. I also know that a beluga from a pond has nothing to do with a beluga from Kazakhstan, and that a pond diamond sturgeon has very little in common with a wild specimen. Still, I'm glad I got to catch and hold them both. After all, in the wild I would not have managed to do so in this lifetime....

I actually found it fun: when a bite indicator started screeching, you never quite knew what was going to be on your hook! by the way, I must stress that even in this lake, you didn't just get your fish for nothing: we had to work pretty hard to catch something decent! Even paywaters have their secrets and demand the best from the angler before they reveal themselves... To sum up: I found it a great adventure and I am very curious about the catch reports from this water in the coming years!

Thomas Sintobin