Catching a monster fish in the Annapolis River

For obvious reasons, live bait is unpredictable. And so Crystal Morrison-newell spent a good half hour on Sunday trying to convince the live gaspereau at the end of her line to swim out further into the Annapolis River’s deep channel.

Because that is where the monsters are.

And the 59 year old is a hunter of monsters.

The gaspereau’s reluctance to comply was understandable.

Perhaps out of its own frustration, the bait fish suddenly made a charge for the channel, dragging the balloon (which in live bait fishing is like a giant bobber) and Morrison-newell’s line with it.

“He hit it like a freight train, so hard he knocked the balloon right off and then took off like a shot,” remembered Morrison-newell on Monday of when the striped bass took the gaspereau.

Four decades of experience with rod and reel kicked in.

By angling standards, she actually started fishing a bit late – stomping along the banks of streams around Bridgewater in her 20s with a former partner chasing trout in the quiet places where the water eddies as it turns upon itself.

Later she moved back home to Annapolis, met Chad Cook and with him discovered the thrill of hunting saltwater predators.

He took her to the fast water where all the rain that fell along the southern reaches of the Annapolis Valley drained into the caribou bog and from there grew over its 120 kilometres before being squeezed between the gates of Nova Scotia Power’s then tidal electric dam in the causeway that choked the big river like a stone tourniquet.

“I don’t remember my first striper but I remember the biggest, well, second biggest now,” said Morrison-newell.

“We were fishing on lures then.”

She fought that 14.5-kilogram (32-pound) striped bass and the force of the river from the banks of the causeway for an hour.

She’d allow the fish to run, feathering the drag on her reel to make it earn each yard.

When it slowed, she stole back – applying enough pressure to regain line without breaking it.

She took the fish home, cleaned it, bathed the fillets in an egg-wash, rolled them in ground crackers and then pan fried them.

Then she and Cook sat across from another at the kitchen table and savoured the meal quietly.

After Nova Scotia Power stopped operating the Annapolis Royal Generating Station in 2019, which created 20 megawatts of peak power by funneling the river and much of the fish that live in it through a giant spinning turbine, Cook and Morrisonnewell changed fishing spots.

That same year Cook landed a 46-pound stripe bass.

As they have explored the now free-flowing river they’ve seen life coming back - menhaeden have been showing up, there ‘s more gaspereau and that has meant more striped bass. While fishing in the dark they hear the long, armoured prehistoric sturgeons leap from the river and slam back down to free themselves of lice.

When, “at an undisclosed location west of Hebbs Landing” the striper turned on Sunday and immediately ran hard for 320 metres taking almost all her line with it, Morrison-newell kept her cool.

This wasn’t her first rodeo. “He ran and flopped and fought and struggled, then he just stopped and I reeled him in,” she said.

Cook kept repeating “he’s a big one” after the spikes on its back broached the river’s surface.

It was all over in 20 minutes – 125 centimetres (49 1/4 inches) long, 76.2 centimetres (30 inches) of girth and 24.5 kilograms (54 pounds).

Asked if she thinks she’ll top it, Morrison-newell responded, “I don’t know, but I’ll try.”

CONTRIBUTED Crystal Morrison-newell with the 24.5 kilograms (1.25 metres long) striped bass she caught in the Annapolis River on Sunday.