Carson Buck of Haines thought he’d maybe caught a big sockeye when his subsistence net took a hit while fishing about 100 yards offshore Mount Riley in Chilkat Inlet last weekend.
But instead of a shiny salmon, he pulled up a green sturgeon, the first known catch of the lizard-looking whitefish on the Chilkat.
Buck, who grew up in Haines, said he immediately recognized the fish from time he spent in northern California going to college, but he didn’t expect to catch one here.
This week he was deciding how to prepare the fish, which measured about 50 inches but only weighed about 20 pounds. He said he’d dry out its dragon-like head and donate it to high school science teacher Mark Fontenot, who collects oddities.
Bruce Wing, a research biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service in Juneau, specializes in Alaska’s rare fish. Green sturgeons in Alaska are likely strays from Oregon or northern California rivers, where there are spawning populations.
Since at least 1930, they’ve been been caught in Southeast at Icy Straits, near the Taku River and at Berners Bay and also in Prince William Sound and Bristol Bay. Three green sturgeons were caught in Taku Inlet two years ago.
The fish are anadramous bottom-dwellers that live on underwater insects. They take seven to 10 years to mature, spawn in freshwater, grow up to seven feet and can live up to 60 years. Interceptions by gillnets account for many of the sightings.
The one Buck caught may have been attempting to spawn, Wing said. “It’s like the moose that winds up on Admiralty Island. Every once in a while we get things running where we don’t expect them.”
The larger, white sturgeon, found in the Sacramento and Columbia rivers, grow to 20 feet. Only one of those has ever been found in Southeast, Wing said.