For DECADES, fishermen on the world famous Fraser River in Canada’s British Columbia have been chasing after the elusive ‘Pig Nose’ sturgeon. It’s hard to contextualize just how famous this ONE fish was but if it helps you can think of it like the Loch Ness Monster of British Columbia except that it’s 100% real and fishermen had caught glimpses of this massive sturgeon with a deformed snout for decades.
Well, ‘Pig Nose’ has finally been caught by guide Nick McCabe of River Monster Adventures but they still don’t know what accident caused this ‘Pig Nose’ malformity on the fish’s face:
Danny Lewis of SmithsonianMag.com reports:
Nick McCabe is a tour guide with River Monster Adventures, a company based out of Lillooet, B.C. that specializes in taking fishermen on trips up and down the Fraser River searching for sturgeon. It’s been decades since the last time Pig Nose was sighted, but earlier this week, McCabe and a tour group nabbed the enormous fish. After two hours of struggling, they finally wrangled Pig Nose out of the deep waters. The legendary fish is more than 10 feet long and weighs 650 pounds.
“We’re walking on clouds,” Jeff Grimolfson, another guide with River Monster Adventures, tells Erika Tucker for Global News. “This fish has been the talk of fishing and sporting goods shops for years.”
The sturgeon’s long life, however, means it also takes a long time for them to reach sexual maturity. It can take the big fish about 20 years to start mating, so their population can rapidly dwindle. Between overfishing and increases in traffic and pollution, some sturgeon species were pushed to the brink of extinction. Many species are now protected throughout the United States and Canada.
Luckily for Pig Nose, all of River Monster Adventures’ sturgeon-fishing trips are catch-and-release. After posing for a few photos and having its measurements taken, the giant sturgeon was sent back into Fraser River to await the next hook.
As we’ve seen here on BroBible in the past, the Fraser River in British Columbia is GROUND ZERO for catching enormous sturgeon. Just back in June this 11-foot-long, 750-pound sturgeon was caught and last October an angler reeled in an 11-foot-long ALBINO sturgeon, which is extremely rare.
So if you bros are ever thinking about booking a sturgeon fishing charter you 100% need to consider the Fraser River as your fishing destination AND you should probably check out River Monster Adventures, the guides responsible for capturing the elusive ‘Pig Nose’ sturgeon.
(h/t SmithsonianMag)