Hey Sportsmen,

I took a few days off to move my daughter back home from Long beach. Besides the tides were weak this last week. Brooke finished college and now will work on her nest step in life. I got back to fishing on Saturday. The tides are starting to build and the fish are starting to bite. On Saturday we hooked and landed 6 sturgeon and 4 bass. 2 of the bass were keepers and 2 were short. 5 of the sturgeon were short and one was oversize. We actually had a double hookup and the 2 sturgeon looked like twin 36 inchers. Nzng Yz from Canada hooked, battled and landed the oversize sturgeon. It was a great fight and normally I would not land a fish this size for fear damaging it. But the clients were aware of the new regulations printed on the report card. It states any sturgeon over 68 inches may not be landed. So therefore you may land a sturgeon up to 68 inches. And that is measuring it the new way, between the tip of the nose and the fork of the tail. Under the old way of measuring a sturgeon it could be 75 inches and legal to land. So now people will try landing these large sturgeon in a net (new regulations) causing damage. I did not want to argue with the client as it was their legal right so I netted the 72 inch fish. The new measurement was 65 inches. I did my best not to damage the fish and I would not let them hold the fish for a photo. If you check out the photo you will see him by the fish and we got it back in the water ASAP. Yesterday my group landed 8 sturgeon, 3 shaker bass and a flounder. 7 of the sturgeon and the 3 bass were shakers. The keeper sturgeon was battled by 14 year old Austin Ramirez from Concord and it went 55 inches (old measurement) 49 inches (new measurement). This was his first sturgeon. At one point the fish went up around the bow and wrapped the anchor chain. It made me nervous as heck but I got it off the chain and Austin finished the battle. The top bait has been JPS (Just plain grass shrimp) followed by eel/grass combo. And all our action has been during the big outgoing tide. We were fishing in 21 feet of water near the middle of the Mothball Fleet. I will be back out a lot this next week and a half as we have some great tides now! Enjoy the photos.

Captain Steve Talmadge