Cpl. Mike Rail says there is no need to exaggerate an RCMP fish story on the rescue of a 2.4-metre sturgeon from a landlocked pond near the Fraser River in British Columbia.
He says an officer spotted the stranded fish near Agassiz on Sept. 20 and recognized it was in danger.
First Nations Police officers work to capture, and later release, a sturgeon on the banks of the Fraser river in a Sept. 20, 2018, handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-RCMP
A team was organized and someone built a box to temporarily hold the fish before they set out in waders with a large net.
The massive fish, which weighed about 136 kilograms, put up a fight as eight people wrestled it into a sling to transport the fish to a river about a kilometre away.
The rescuers dumped several buckets of water into the tarp-lined box to keep the 75-year-old sturgeon alive for the trip in the back of a pickup truck.
Rail says they got the sturgeon into the water, pointed its head into the current and a few minutes later it slowly swam off into the murky water.
"It was an amazing experience," said Rail, who observed the rescue and took video.
"We get in there and I see this huge fish, I ran out of words," he said Thursday.
"If there had only been one or two people there, I swear it would have bowled somebody over."
