Fishing News
Leaping sturgeons! Giant fish injuring boaters
BY Susan Cocking, [email protected]
If last year was the summer of the biting shark, then this is the summer of the leaping sturgeon.
Three Florida boaters have been struck by the giant, jumping, bony-plated fish since Memorial Day weekend. Four more sturgeon-human collisions or near-misses have been reported during the past seven years.
On Aug. 4, Brian Clemens, 50, who lives near Panama City, was struck in the chest by a sturgeon he estimates at five to six feet as he drove his 14-foot fishing boat along the Choctawhatchee River. Clemens was knocked backward off his seat and lost control of the boat, which plowed into the riverbank and threw him on shore. He suffered a cracked sternum, two broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and got 16 stitches in his knee. The fish jumped back into the water. The boat is a wreck.
''We hit head-on,'' Clemens said. "I didn't have time to duck, dodge, or do anything. It splattered me.''
On July 4, Danny Cordero, 19, of Perry was riding his personal watercraft on the Suwannee River with his girlfriend when a sturgeon knocked both overboard. Cordero cracked some teeth and suffered facial cuts.
During Memorial Day weekend, Newberry Elementary School principal Lacy Redd, 34, was boating on the Suwannee with her husband and three children when a sturgeon estimated at six feet long and weighing about 130 pounds struck her in the chest and chin.
''It knocked me unconscious,'' Redd said. "I had three broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a pretty severe concussion. I count myself lucky all three kids are OK.''
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