As mornings on the Fraser River go, this one seemed unremarkable. A thin mist blanketed the swollen, high water near Chilliwack, British Columbia. The air was crisp.
At 4:30 a.m., Kevin Estrada, 44, jumped into a hot sauna before a day of angling giant, prehistoric fish on that day in early June.
The group hopped into two boats, with Estrada guiding a pair of trucking managers from Fort McMurray, Shawn North and Elvis Penton, while his hired hand followed with the rest. Estrada said he knows a spot north of Chilliwack. He had guided NHL defenseman Nick Leddy there in 2024, where the hockey player bagged a 10-footer—a lifetime catch for many anglers.
“This spot is known for large fish,” Estrada told The Epoch Times, though he wouldn’t divulge the exact location. “That would ruin it with too many people coming there,” he said. “It impacts our business.”
Many guides will fish their whole lives and never see anything over 11-feet, he said, calling them “unicorns.” But Estrada had caught two 11-footers during his career on the Fraser River. His company’s record was an 11-foot, 6.5-inch sturgeon reeled in by another NHL client, legendary goalie Pete Peters, back in 2021.
That was the record.
Until today.
The morning started uneventfully, but soon a bend in the rod told Estrada something was stirring. At about 10 a.m., the men snagged something big, and the guide knew to drift downriver with the fish, to finesse it to where he wanted it to go. The two truckers took turns at the reel.
This is the time of year when water from snowmelt makes the Fraser River wide, deep, and murky, with the occasional floating tree or log to negotiate. That makes sturgeon fishing complicated, as the guide must skillfully maneuver the boat while tugging fish to more workable, shallower shores. There, they can measure and tag the sturgeon for government research.
Estrada managed it all. The 40-minute battle between anglers and sturgeon ended in the weeds of a submerged sandbar Estrada had pre-planned for landing the fish. Handling the sturgeon’s massive jawbone in the waist-deep water, Estrada rolled the tired behemoth upside-down to induce a catatonic state. He was awestruck by the size. Then the tape measures came out.
A single 120-inch tape wasn’t enough. And the final numbers were staggering: 11 feet, 8.2 inches long with a 60-inch girth, weighing an estimated 1,100 to 1,200 pounds. The over-a-century-old giant had broke the company’s 2021 record by nearly two inches. Yet it had no tracking tag.
“Congratulations, boys,” Estrada told the two men. “We’re all part of a historic moment.”
As a leader in the Fraser River conservation community, Estrada has access to data the public doesn’t, including the sizes of sturgeon tagged over the decades. While conceding this one isn’t a world he record, he said he knows it’s historic, calling it “the new record.”
The two boats met. Photos were taken with the fishermen and the now-tranquil leviathan. Celebrations were had with non-alcoholic beers.
But for Estrada, who was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal for his prior fishery research and flood rescue efforts, the catch meant more than a new record. The missing tag was proof of a thriving river.
“The biggest overreaching story on that is that conservation works,” he said, pointing to B.C.’s strict catch-and-release model. “It’s a circular management system. You protect the fish, you don’t kill them. And then the license money goes back to it. Those using the resource are the ones protecting it.”
Having survived 200 million years and two ice ages, white sturgeon boast an incredibly low catch-and-release mortality rate of just 0.012 percent. “These fish don’t have tongues, so there’s no tongue bleeding,” Estrada noted. “This is one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world.”
By logging critical data free of charge, volunteer guides like Estrada keep the fishery stable. “We’re getting a better understanding of fish sizes all the way through the different classes,” he said. “Understanding how many fish are out there is critical. Otherwise, you have no clue what is going on in the Fraser River.”
After injecting a tiny microchip beneath its skin to log the dinosaur into the government registry, the group guided the sturgeon off the sandbar into the deep channel. With a slow, powerful sweep of its ancient tail, the record-breaker disappeared into the murky water, leaving the two truckers from Fort McMurray in awe.
“The fact that this one is so large means that they’re surviving,“ Estrada said, watching the river smooth over. ”And they have a chance to get that big.”
