Sturgeon – Page 2 – Jones Sport Fishing

We snuck out yesterday for an early Sturgeon fishing trip on the Snake River out of Heller Bar. With our steelhead season behind us we have been switched over to targeting catch and release sturgeon. The weather was a little unsettled, but the fish were cooperative. We landed a small 3 foot fish and one monster 8 footer. We also had a few other bites, but considering we only fished for a few hours I think we did fantastic.

Our bait of choice is salmon bellies and scraps from salmon season. We find this to be the most consistent bait, but we often fish other baits such as squid, roll mop herring, worms, or any fresh cut bait we can get our hands on.

Catch and release sturgeon fishing will be great from now through the end of June. On our sturgeon trips we average multiple fish landed per day with the fish ranging from 3-11 feet in length. We also offer sturgeon trips with the possiblity of keepers on the Hanford reach during this same time frame. These trips are a great experience that all should see. The power of these large sturgeon is amazing.

The Snake River out of Heller Bar continues to fish well. Yesterday we had a great day on the river with only 2 customers going 6-10 on Steelhead and also landing a 3 foot sturgeon on steelhead gear.

We found most of our fish just upstream from Heller Bar as the Grand Ronde is flowing very high and muddy, and has made the Snake River downstream from the Grand Ronde muddy and not fishable.

We had almost all our bites drifting my Jones Sport Fishing shrimp cure in the bright red color in combination with a chartreuse cheater or corkie.

I am not really sure how much longer we can expect good fishing in this area, but I’m expecting it to fish well through at least this next weekend, we might se good fishing later on, but water conditions will dictate that. After that we often have great success switching over to catch and release trophy sturgeon fishing.