Utah man comes home from Idaho with tale of state record sturgeon catch

Warning: Undefined array key -1 in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 598

Deprecated: strpos(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($haystack) of type string is deprecated in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 598

Warning: Undefined variable $total_characters in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 599

Warning: Undefined variable $blockquote_on in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 600

Warning: Undefined array key 10 in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 597

Deprecated: strpos(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($haystack) of type string is deprecated in /nas/content/live/ksltvstage/wp-content/themes/bonneville-news-theme/functions.php on line 597

EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — A man went on a fishing trip to Idaho earlier this month and came home with a tale of a state record sturgeon catch.

Greg Poulsen and his wife went on a guided fishing trip on Aug. 5 on the Snake River near C.J. Strike Reservoir when Poulsen had a massive tug on the line.

“It just feels like you’re reeling in a refrigerator off the bottom of this river,” Poulsen told KSL TV in an interview Tuesday evening. “As soon as I hooked it up and we started reeling it in, the sturgeon came up and it jumped out of the water and it was like something on ‘Shark Week.’ It was huge. We were like, ‘holy crap,’ and the guide started freaking out because he knew it was a really big one.”

It WAS a really big one — 10-feet, 4-inches long, enough to shatter the previous Idaho state record.

“Because it was 48 inches around and how long it is, they’ve got a pretty good idea how much they weigh and he said it would be somewhere around 600 pounds,” Poulsen said. “It was so big that three people were holding the bottom jaw, so it was just huge.”

Because of state laws, Poulsen caught the sturgeon and released it shortly after it was measured.

He said it was quite the trip — also catching two 9-footers, an 8-footer and a 7-foot-long fish.

“Usually I catch the littlest fish out of everybody, so I got really lucky this time,” Poulsen said. “This was by far the best fishing experience I’ve ever had and not even close.”