The trick to releasing sturgeon is to turn them over on their back in the water. This disorients the fish, and they become amazingly docile. Putting a 65-inch, 80-pound sturgeon into the boat for careful measurement can lead to disaster. When a big fish comes to life, it whips its tail, thrashing through tackle boxes, chairs and anglers' legs. Some anglers have put measurement marks along the side of the boat, or on the gunwales. This can save a lot of hassle.

Fishing the flats has some real advantages. There are plenty of productive flats to fish on both sides of the river and they are lightly fished, while the big holes below the bridge get hammered by charter and pleasure boaters.

Challenges include selecting a boat launch near the flat you want to fish, studying a navigational chart of the area, scouting the flats on high tide and planning your fishing trip. Safety is of the essence here. (Continued)

At first, the sheer size of the estuary can be overwhelming. The mouth of the Columbia River is wide and long. The three-mile long Megler Astoria Bridge crosses the Columbia from Astoria, Ore., to Point Ellice, Wash.

On the Oregon side, the bridge is high enough and river channel deep enough for giant ocean-going freighters to pass under it.

Crossing the bridge at low tide, you can see miles and miles of exposed flats and mini-channels up and down the river. On a high tide, many of these flats provide excellent foraging grounds for hungry sturgeon seeking clams, sand shrimp, crabs and eels.

SECRETS OF THE FLATS
For more than a decade, I seemed to have the flats to myself for fishing sturgeon. A handful of guides and locals knew about the flats and kept the secret of their excellent fishing. I learned about them while working on a research boat for Washington Department of Fish and Game that was doing a sturgeon study.

To tag, weigh, measure and monitor sturgeon numbers in the Columbia River estuary, biologists hired commercial gill-netters experienced at catching sturgeon. These professionals knew the river, the tides and most productive locations to net and release sturgeon unharmed.

To my amazement, the best catches came off various flats spread out over a five-mile area above and below the bridge. On one pull of a floating gillnet, we untangled and tagged more than 100 sturgeon between 2 and 5 feet long.

Over a two-day period, we tagged over 300 sturgeon. It was amazing!

On my next day off, I was back on the flats with my daughters, fishing. We launched our 13-foot Gregor aluminum boat with a 15-horsepower Evinrude in the Chinook Boat Basin on the Washington side and motored out through the marked channel.

We fished the flats in front of Chinook Boat Basin just off the pilings. It was close to shore, out of the main current and shallow. I anchored up in 6 feet of water. Soon my two young daughters were hooked up. Kelly had on a big fish, while Erin had a small one. Kelly's line went slack as the fish raced directly at our boat, jumped and threw the hook! The leaping sturgeon splashed so close to the boat that the spray almost hit us.

Sturgeon often jump when they're hooked up in shallow water. But the sight of a 7-foot sturgeon leaping is totally unexpected. It's not the acrobatic leap of a tarpon, but a spectacular, powerful straightforward lunge.

Erin's sturgeon jumped three different times, giving us a mind's-eye snapshot never to forget.