The Fraser River has given up another giant. A guided charter out of Chilliwack, British Columbia, has landed, tagged and released a white sturgeon that its skipper believes is the largest of the species ever measured — and in doing so beat a record the same crew set on the same water in 2021.
Sturgeon Slayers measured the fish this week at 11 feet, 8.2 inches in fork length, with a 60-inch pectoral girth and an estimated weight of 1,100 to 1,200 pounds. The mark it surpassed, an 11-foot-6.5-inch fish with a 55-inch girth, was also a Sturgeon Slayers catch. Kevin Estrada, who started the company in 2008 and is co-chairman of the Fraser Valley Angling Guides Association, was in the boat for both.
To Estrada, the repeat says something about the river's recovery, not just his crew's luck.
"The significance of both these record-setting fish is that conservation works. These fish are getting bigger and the fact that both had not been caught and tagged before is incredible," Estrada said. "This latest fish is far more than a record. It demonstrates what happens when conservation, responsible angling, scientific collaboration and public awareness come together to protect a species that has survived for millions of years."
White sturgeon are the biggest freshwater fish in North America, capable of living more than a hundred years. The Fraser fishery is strictly catch-and-release, and operators lean hard on careful handling — short fights, controlled landings and full recovery before a fish goes back. Sturgeon Slayers framed that discipline as non-negotiable.
"The group operates with a simple truth: that there is no future in guiding without conservation," the company said. "Every trip it makes on the Fraser River is guided with respect for the fish, the ecosystem, and the responsibility that comes with access to one of the world's most important white sturgeon fisheries."
The catch was recorded through the Sturgeon Monitoring and Assessment Tagging Program, whose partners include the guides association, the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation, InStream Fisheries Research, the Province of British Columbia and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Both record fish were untagged when caught, so each fed new growth and movement data into that long-running study.
The "world record" tag comes with an asterisk worth noting. As outdoor site BroBible pointed out, British Columbia measures sturgeon from nose to tail fork, while many U.S. records run nose to tail tip — a method that yields a longer number. Even on the stricter fork-length basis, the outlet said, this is the longest white sturgeon measured anywhere.
None of it is a fluke for the Fraser. Last summer the river produced "Ghost," a sturgeon thought to be more than a century old, caught and released near Lillooet and reported widely across Canada. The pattern is why guides keep working the system — and why the tagging program logs every fish that reaches the gunwale. For Estrada, a second untagged giant turning up five years after the first is proof the conservation model is doing its job.