NHL hockey player Nick Leddy (L) poses with his over 10-foot sturgeon beside Chilliwack-based fishing guide Kevin Estrada, who runs and operates Sturgeon Slayers. Courtesy of Kevin Estrada
British Columbia’s mighty Fraser River twists its way down from the highest Rocky Mountains to the sea near Vancouver. Named by early explorers seeking new trade routes in the 19th century, it was called “Elhdaqox” by Athabaskan tribes, which in the Tsilhqot'in language means “sturgeon.”
Where the Fraser Valley opens into a wide canyon before dumping into the Pacific Ocean, fishing guides like Kevin Estrada capitalize on this still-pristine river’s robust population of prehistoric bottom feeders. The name of the Chilliwack-based operation he runs, Sturgeon Slayers, is misleading, because Estrada, 42, a former NHL draftee, is bent on conservation, tagging the fish he catches for recreation and then releasing them.
At 8 a.m. every morning, he is already on the water, taking clients upriver to the likeliest spots he figures the gargantuan sturgeon that have made the Fraser famous will be lurking. This has been his line of work for the past 17 years.
There are no dams on the river, he says, which means it’s bustling with food and connects with the ocean, making the Fraser a Mecca for some of the world’s largest sturgeon. Famous clients—including pro hockey players, YouTubers, and clothing line CEOs—constantly arrive at the doors of Sturgeon Slayers to escape their hectic and busy lives and reconnect their primordial selves with mother nature.
(Left) Nick Leddy caught a huge sturgeon, but this one was dwarfed by the 10-footer he caught on the last day of his trip; (Right) Nick Leddy (L) and Kevin Estrada on a recent sturgeon fishing excursion on the Fraser River. Courtesy of Kevin Estrada
St. Louis Blues defenceman Nick Leddy fishes for sturgeon with Estrada semi-annually. On the final day of his recent four-day tour, Estrada told him to expect clouds and rain, while noting however that the changing precipitation held promise.
“The first three days, we got beautiful sunshine,“ Estrada told The Epoch Times. ”I told him, ‘If we’re going to get a big fish on one of these days, it’s going to be the last day. I got a feeling about the weather.’”
As a low pressure system swept in around noon, Estrada watched from inside his cozy, diesel-heated cab as Leddy battled it out with a monstrous sturgeon bending his line, the rain pouring down. Despite the damp and discomfort, the guide knew the defenceman was “having the time his life.”
“A lot of these professional athletes—it’s strict [physical and mental training] their entire life,” Estrada said. “When they get away for the very short period of time to go on a vacation in the summertime, this is what Nick loves to do.”
(Left) Nick Leddy (L) and Kevin Estrada pose behind the massive sturgeon that measured over 10 feet in length; (Right) Nick Leddy fights to reel in the enormous sturgeon. Courtesy of Kevin Estrada
After a 30-minute tug-o-war with the sturgeon, which performed jaw-dropping leaps throughout, Leddy’s efforts were rewarded with a specimen exceeding 10 feet that was a re-catch. Estrada says fishing the Fraser River is always a gamble—even at his level of expertise; the fact that Leddy had snagged 10-footers in years past was no guarantee he ever would again, yet that’s what happened. He was lucky.
The hockey player got into the water and planted a kiss on the forehead of the dragon-like fish, which had now become sufficiently catatonic after its battle, and after Estrada rotated it belly-up to induce this state. He then measured it at 317 centimetres (10.4 feet) from tip to fort of the tail with a pectoral girth of 129 centimetres and estimated weight of 758 pounds. This sturgeon had been tagged before and had grown a dozen centimetres since last time.
Nick Leddy poses with his giant catch. Courtesy of Kevin Estrada
Estrada says his sturgeon catches have very low mortality rates, only 0.012 percent, and “aren’t like a trout that you caught with grandpa when you were younger, and you let it bounce around in the boat, and then you released it and then it died.”
“These are very hearty fish,” he said. “And we have very strict protocols with handling the fish, the gear we have to use, it’s all barbless hooks.”
Sturgeon Slayers as an outfit defies its name. Estrada says he came up with it as a play on words several years ago, even though it might turn some people off (it seems fitting for the former NHL hopeful). Now, it’s become so well known—with organizations like National Geographic and Coyote Peterson’s Brave Wilderness filming here—that it’s hard to change, though when asked whether he would if he could do it over again, he said “probably.”
The Fraser River in B.C. Shutterstock/karamysh
He is quick to point to his tagline, “catch-record-release.” Far from slaying sturgeon, Estrada, who holds a bachelor of science, actively collects data for government conservation efforts, tagging and documenting all his sturgeons and promoting pro-sturgeon attitudes in all his clients. The latter effort requires little work; the species’ inherent beauty goes a long way toward that end.
It was no different when Leddy caught his 10-footer; both men couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of admiration for this creation of nature, something so large and old. “It’s a very emotional moment,“ Estrada said, adding that he can’t understand anglers who do ”trophy hunting.”
“I’ve had grown men cry after releasing big fish with their wives there, and their wives telling me, ‘I’ve never seen him cry.’”
“Some people get it and some don’t,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to protect these fish.”
(Left) Coyote Peterson fished with Sturgeon Slayers to film an episode of "Brave Wilderness" on YouTube; (Right) Estrada's son holds up a juvenile sturgeon alongside other children as they search for missing data on young fish in the Fraser River. Courtesy of Kevin Estrada
When Estrada has crossed paths with fellow conservationists, they often go to the other extreme, claiming sturgeon are endangered when they’re actually thriving in the Fraser River. That led Estrada to embark on a study to locate missing data in the sturgeon equation: finding adorable sturgeon juveniles.
He says the B.C. government found that juvenile sturgeon were in decline and made a fuss, but Estrada, who co-chairs the local fishing guide association, understood this was only because data collectors like himself only bait very large sturgeon, which would show no juveniles. And so he and several biologists and scientists set out on a mass volunteer effort to show that the sturgeon were still spawning. He posted photos of his young son, an aspiring angler, and a number of other children on the river, holding up cute mini-sturgeons as they documented their numbers.
It was a “feel-good” story for everyone, he said.
“We were on the front page of The Province during COVID,” Estrada added. “A lot of these kids had never fished in their life before, but now they’re outside, they’re on a boat, they’re doing citizen science, collecting data on juveniles, and it was such a heartwarming story.”
Michael Wing
Editor and Writer
Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.
