Fishing Adventure

I went with my family on a sturgeon fishing adventure in the Columbia river. It was a blast. On Thursday last, Emily, my mom, and sister Ruth went to the Tilamook cheese factory where we toured the plant, bought cheese and ate ice cream it was great.
From there we went to Moe's where we met up with my father and ate dinner of the regular clam chowder which is so delicious. After dinner, Emily headed back to Camas because she wasn't much interested in fishing and had work that she needed to get done. My parents, sister and I went to Long Beach where we stayed in a seedy motel and then woke the next morning at 3:45 or some other miserable hour. We had to be at our boat at 5:30.
We left the harbor on a boat called the Sea Quest with our Skipper Tim and two other fisherman, a man named Jon, and a man named Colton. We had a great time. The fishing was pretty consistent with someone reeling in one every hour or so. I think we ended up catching about a dozen or so. Unfortunately we only caught 4 legal ones. You can only keep ones between 45 and 60 inches. I caught the first one of the day. It was about 49 inches. I caught another one later in the day that was just legal at 45".
My Dad caught the other two legal ones, one 52", and one 47".
My sister has been suffering from an injured arm and had difficulty reeling the fish in. With my help on the pole, she was able to reel in two of them. Unfortunately they were both too small.
My mother caught a monster one that we estimated at about 66 inches. It took 5 of us to reel the beast in.
The biggest fish though was caught by Jon. It was probably 6 feet long and one of the meanest fish I've ever seen. It ripped through the net to start with, thrashed around on the boat and ended up smacking my mom and sister with its tail. My mom almost fell out of the boat trying to flee it. Unfortunately the thing had been captured in a gill net previously and was seriously beat up. I don't think he liked getting pulled out of the water by us. Jon was able to land the fish by himself. Our fellow fisherman also both caught a couple of small ones.
All in all, we had a great time. I even braved tasting the fish. As was expected, I didn't much care for it. Oh, well. Here's a few pictures.


This is me reeling in the first fish of the day.

This is my first fish of the day and my dad reeling in his first one.

This is my mom's monster and my sister's little one.

This is Jon with Tim the skipper holding his monster.


This is my family and our Skipper Tim with the legal fish we caught. My dad caught the two on the left and I caught the two on the right.