my first pallid sturgeon! (video footage)

[fishcast]

I finally got my first pallid sturgeon! I got it incidentally while targeting walleye and sauger on the Missouri River in North Dakota. If you look closely you can actually see a radio transmitter in it too.

[DTro]

Nice catch! Absolutely a Pallid. I'd love to catch one. Congrats.

[smalliehunter]

Very cool!

[esoxrocks01]

I didn't know Pallid Sturgeon could make it up that far north. That's one beautiful sturgeon! I'll have another place to fish besides Devil's Lake when I go to North Dakota now!

[JeremyCampbell]

Nice video.

[JBMasterAngler]

Cool looking fish. Looks like something that would come out of the amazon or something. Are they threatened/endangered and on the come back trail, or is it still too early to tell?

[Cthulhu]

Beautiful fish, congrats! I'm very jealous

JBMasterAngler - they are endangered, a lot of effort is being put into the recovery. They are successfully spawning them in hatcheries, only few locations have potential wild spawning habitat left. Maybe in a few decades there will be a couple self-sustaining populations, only time will tell...

[MN BassFisher]

Beautiful fish! Well done.

[fishuhalik]

Didn't even know these critters existed. I used to fish the Missouri by Williston fairly frequently. Tons of unique stuff in that river system up there

[fishcast]

thanks guys! awesome fish indeed! a fair amour of pallids around here! i've seen a few caught now!

[fishcast]

fishuhalik, this fish was right by Williston. down by the "pump house" south of town. Missouri river system has insane fishing at times.

[fishuhalik]

Spent many, many hours down by the pump house. Caught tons of cats, shovelnose, eyes, drum, etc etc there. For all I know some of those shovelers coulda been pallids. Anyone have their ice houses out there yet? Those dudes are crazy!! Some of those houses were 10' from open, rushing water.

[fishcast]

Im sure someone has tried going on the river but i haven't seen it myself for a few weeks now. We have 6-10" of ice in a number of smaller waters- crazy how early ice came! I fished the trenton backwaters about 9 days ago, but i've never ice fished the main river though... Late into last fall we had very excellent sauger and walleye fishing at the pump house (along with other awesome bonus fish), but this year about the time we were trying it, it froze over! haha At the confluence a week before freeze up I accidentally snagged a pretty huge paddle fish with a jigging rapala and 8lb line... managed to get it all the way into the boat for a pic and release! Certain season in particular there is some incredible fishing in NW north dakota for sure!

[Scott M]

Just seeing this now Josh...I've got a buddy in MT that tagged a bunch of pallids, maybe you caught one of his! Course that's a lot of dam jumping...

[fishuhalik]

Ya, buddies have been going out on Trenton & Cottonwood for a few weeks. My landlord gets some huge eyes on the river in the winter. Several 29-31"ers