The 3rd Annual SJR500 fishing tournament on the Rainy River is in the books! We want to thank the 50+ participants who joined us at River Bend Resort for the two-day Fish Donkey tourney. You helped raise over $500 for the Keep it Clean effort at Lake of the Woods!

It was an unreal trip to the Walleye Capital for STURGEON! While we did catch some big walleyes and the giants are getting caught left and right up there right now, the lake sturgeon were putting on a show. Jamie Dietman and Jesse Sanders put 40-50 sturgeon in their boat during the two days. I heard of other groups that had 50-60 fish days. It was nuts.

Jamie Dietman with a big sturgeon

Dan and I didn’t participate in the tournament but we fished hard for (mostly) 4 days. We had some boat issues at the access at Timber Mill on our first day. Despite the motor firing up right away and then quitting, it would crank but not start. We pulled the boat back off the access and sat in the parking lot with the cowling off for a couple hours checking plugs, fuses, fuel hoses, and anything else we could think of on the google machine. We went back to River Bend and a couple of the guys in the tourney got their hands dirty trying to figure it out (thanks!). Finally, Dan found something in a forum about Optimax motors needing a certain amount of amperage to turn over. The battery that came with the boat had worked just fine for the last year or so, but must have been at the end of it’s life. So a quick trip to Outdoors Again in Baudette to pick up a new battery was needed.

That did the trick. Weird.

Now we had to decide where to fish. The last couple of years we desperately watched accesses open up while the tournament was happening, so mostly we fished out of Birchdale, Vidas and Frontier. This year, we had Timber Mill and by the first day of the tourney, Wheeler’s Point. Do we fish the gap or run up the River?

That’s my blood.

We did some running but ultimately stayed close to the big lake. We caught some nice walleyes and watched so many sturgeon get caught around us, it was crazy. It seemed like big numbers of slot fish were up river, but the big ones weren’t there yet. Now that we’re home, it sounds so though the big ones are there now. As you know, the situation is fluid (see what I did there?). Those fish move back and forth and wind, currents and water clarity can effect the bite.

Bret with a 28″ walleye

But it sure sounds like this year was one of the best in recent memory. The number of sturgeon caught will help us in the fight to keep them from being listed on the endangered species list. The battle from the Center for Biological Diversity has made it’s way to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Tony Kennedy wrote about it in the Star Tribune yesterday.

We also discussed it in our interviews with Joe Henry, Paul Johnson and some of the anglers that were on the river with us this week in the latest Sporting Journal Radio:

Congrats to Dustin Nielson for taking first place with a 30″ walleye and Jamie Dietman for the 68″ sturgeon.

We had over 100 sturgeon entered into the Fish Donkey app! After Day 1, we realized how good the fishing was and asked the participants to register all their sturgeon no matter how big or small. So with the increase of registrants for day 2, we finished with 107 sturgeon entered, but in reality there were many more than that caught, including a few tagged fish.

Dan Amundson with a nice sturgeon

Paul Johnson from River Bend Resort caught a 62″ while we were motoring by so we stopped to film it and help net it since we had a new 116 from Stowmaster. Dan maneuvered his boat and reached out to net the big fish while I captured it for the Fish Hunt Forever YouTube channel.

The tag number was sent in to the DNR and the results are listed below. This information is vital to managing the sturgeon population and without anglers out there catching and reporting the tags, you wouldn’t have this.

That sturgeon was tagged in fourmile bay 20 years ago. It has grown 33″ since then and is now 36 years old. It’s amazing that with all the angling pressure that goes on in that part of the river, this fish hadn’t been caught before.

Mark your calendars for next year’s tourney, April 8-9th. River Bend is offering $50 per night per person, book now before they fill up! Special thanks to On X, Livetarget, Kast King, Smiths Consumer Products, Outdoors Again, Ridge Top Outdoors, Border Bait, Lake of the Woods Tourism and River Bend Resort, for providing prizes.

If you want to be involved in next year’s tourney, let us know here.