After more than a decade of eluding fishermen, a Chilliwack-based fishing charter company has finally caught and landed "Ghost."
"It was a pretty special moment, and also very nerve-wracking, because we knew what we had on the end of the hook, and I was like, 'don't screw this up'," said Jeff Grimolfson, owner of River Monster Adventures. "And it was neat to see that a fish that could be 120 to 140 years old, you know, still roaming around out there."
The fisherman and his crew, deckhand Wynn Davy, caught "Ghost," a nearly 3.1-metre or 10鈥�2鈥� long, and 700 pounds, white sturgeon, just south of Lillooet on July 7. The catch was made while chartering a boat for two repeat clients, Glen Wood and Ian Touw, from Edmonton, Alberta.
The fish got its nickname by eluding fishermen for 15 years. During that time, Grimolfson said he and the crew could see the fish on their sonar, which also revealed how big he was, and tried going for him "hundreds of times." Unfortunately, no matter what they did to entice him, the fish refused to be hooked.
This all changed last Monday at around 3 p.m. when the group hooked the sturgeon. For the first few minutes, Grimolfson said that they thought that the hook had gotten snagged at the bottom of the river. Then Ghost started swimming upriver and the crew found themselves following it for a bit. It was only when the sturgeon jumped out of the water that they realized what they had caught.
"And we were like, 'Oh my goodness, this is a whale'!" Grimolfson said. "And when he dropped, I'm sure the water level in the Fraser River dropped several feet. He's just a beast."
To catch Ghost, the crew used a braided, 200-pound test line, with a one-pound weight that sits at the bottom, and a 20-inch hook off the weight. The weight and hook "roams" the bottom of the murky Fraser River.
Though he referred to Ghost as a male, Grimolfson said that the fish's gender is unknown and would have required an invasive procedure to figure out. The fisherman didn't want to put the sturgeon through that and, after tagging Ghost, released it soon after.
Because of this, it is believed that Grimolfson and his crew are the first to catch the sturgeon. This also makes Ghost the oldest and largest fish that has ever been caught by River Monster Adventures.
Previously, the fishing charter company's biggest catch was Pig Nose, which is known as the Loch Ness Monster of white sturgeons. At the time, Pig Nose weighed 650 pounds and measured at 10 feet and two inches long with a five-and-a-half-foot girth. It was also estimated to be around 80 to 100 years in age. Unlike Ghost, Pig Nose has been caught and released multiple times.
Great white sturgeon are the largest freshwater fish found in several western North American rivers. They are native to the Fraser River and can live for over 150 years. Though it is at the top of the food chain, a series of issues (like overfishing, habitat alteration, declining water quality, heavy industrial infrastructure like dams and diking), along with the species long maturity, has it listed as a threatened species.
Due to this, fishing charter companies like River Monster Adventures work with the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society to collect data on the species, and help protect them for the future.
There are larger sturgeon that have been caught in the Fraser River. On July 3, 2024, an 11-foot sturgeon was caught by Vickram Karavadra and his guide, Robert Wozniakiezicz where the Harrison River meets the Fraser River.
And in 2021, a crew of fishermen caught an 11.6-foot sturgeon, weighing in at 890 pounds, in the Fraser River.
"Ghost is definitely the highlight of my fishing career," he said. "I'm getting close to 50 years old, and I'm not sure how many years of guiding I have left in me. But I wondered if I would ever be involved with another one of those monstrous fish catches. And sure enough, my time came.
"Of course, now I'm thinking to myself, 'is it possible to catch one bigger than that? Do they exist here? So, we're back to searching the river endlessly, seeing what we can find."
