Grand Forks, N.D. ? Yvonne Murray has fished more than 30 years, so she knows what it’s like to catch big fish. Her “personal best” list includes northern pike weighing nearly 30 pounds.

But nothing, the East Grand Forks woman says, will top the fish she caught and released last Sunday afternoon while fishing with her husband, Tim, and son, Billy, near the mouth of the Rainy River.

Big sturgeon will have that effect on a person.

Murray never weighed the fish – few hand-held scales go that high, anyway – but the sturgeon measured 68 inches long and had a girth of about 32 inches.

According to estimates from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, that would put the sturgeon at about 105 pounds – nearly 11 pounds more than the existing state record of 94 pounds, 4 ounces, which came from the Kettle River in eastern Minnesota in 1994. That fish measured 70 inches and had a girth of 261â2 inches.

Murray couldn’t keep the sturgeon, though, so talk about a state record is only speculation.

Sturgeon fishing has gained popularity on Lake of the Woods and the Rainy River in recent years, as more anglers discover the thrill of catching one of the freshwater giants. Now is prime time for catching them as the fish stage near spawning areas. The slow-growing, prehistoric-looking fish are rebounding nicely on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River after overfishing and poor water quality nearly wiped them out in the early 1900s.

Still, sturgeon as big as the fish Murray released remain relatively rare.

“I’ve seen a lot of fish out there, but nothing like this one,” she said.

After going the previous day without a bite, the trio encountered better fishing last Sunday, Murray recalls. They’d landed eight sturgeon up to about 30 pounds when Tim Murray suggested calling it a weekend.

This hand out photo shows Yvonne Murray, left, of East Grand Forks, Minn, and her son, Billy holding up the large sturgeon she caught April 9, 2006, near the mouth of the Rainy River near Baudette, Minn. The sturgeon measured 68 inches long and had a girth of about 32 inches. According to estimates from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, that would put the sturgeon at about 105 pounds.

That’s when Yvonne felt the fish nibbling at the end of her line.

Despite their size, sturgeon don’t so much strike the bait as gently suck it in off the bottom. This fish was no exception, and Murray says she could barely feel the bite.

Until she set the hook. That’s when the “reel” fun began.

“You knew you had a fish on,” she said. “It took the line out, I’d get it back. My husband was coaching me. All I remember is him saying, ‘Don’t give it no slack, don’t give it no slack.”‘

As big sturgeon often do, the fish occasionally would just stop, leaving Yvonne rearing back on the rod only to have nothing happen. Imagine trying to reel in a parked car, and you’ll have an idea of what that’s like.

“I said, ‘What am I doing wrong?”‘ she said.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong, of course, and Tim Murray says he just told his wife to stay calm and enjoy the experience.

“It was so funny. When she was fighting that fish, there were times when she just couldn’t go any more,” he said. “She would rest the rod on the side of the boat there, and I would tell her, ‘When you’re resting, the fish is resting.”‘

Hooked sturgeon occasionally will surface or even go airborne during the course of the battle but this fish had other ideas. Even with heavy tackle, 25-pound test line and steady pressure on the rod, the sturgeon didn’t come to the surface until right at the end, about 45 minutes after Yvonne first felt the bite.

“We never seen it until it was right next to the boat,” Tim Murray said. “Some of the other ones came up quite a ways from the boat, but not this one. He wasn’t coming off the bottom.”

At one point, Yvonne says she wanted to hand the rod off to her son, Billy, to let him play the fish; her arms were ready to give out. And with an audience of about 20 other boats watching the battle unfold, she didn’t want to lose the fish.

“All I could concentrate on was all these boats around me,” she said “I was thinking if I lost this fish my husband would kill me.”

Yvonne toughed it out, though, and she got good marks from her coach and fishing partner.

“She did a fabulous job,” Tim said.

Yvonne says she couldn’t believe her eyes when the fish finally surfaced.

“I thought, ‘This is my fish?”‘ she said. “I knew it was big, but I never dreamed it was that big.”

Getting the big sturgeon into the boat would be an adventure, too. Tim says he’d watched other anglers grab sturgeon by the tail to bring the fish into the boat.

This fish was so big, though, that he couldn’t get a good grip on its tail.

It took a couple of tries, but Tim and his son eventually managed to reach under the gill plates and lift the sturgeon onboard.

Yvonne says she was almost too scared to look.

“Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything so big,” she said. “My son was giving out yells and everything. I was standing there in amazement looking.”

Yvonne couldn’t have kept the sturgeon because the season is catch-and-release only until April 24. Even if harvest season had been open, the sturgeon wasn’t in the allowable slot size, which is limited to fish between 45 and 50 inches or longer than 75 inches.

Still, the Murrays wanted a photo to remember the experience.

“Tim says, ‘Can you hold the fish?’ And I said, ‘Are you nuts? I can’t even breathe,”‘ Yvonne said.

Her son helped by holding the front of the fish while Yvonne held on from the tail. All they had was a disposable camera, but the photos turned out great. Yvonne, who works at Season’s Restaurant in East Grand Forks, says she’s still showing off the pictures.

“It was one of the best trips of my whole life, and I’ve been fishing for 33 years,” she said. “This will never be forgotten.”

Big sturgeon will have that effect on a person.