NEWBURYPORT — It's a rare catch for sure, but for the second straight summer, a fisherman on the Merrimack River landed a primitive Atlantic sturgeon.
The fish, which grows to lengths of 15 feet, live for as long as six decades and are some of the most primitive animals in the waters of North America. They are on the state's endangered list and are not a usual catch in local waters known for populations of stripers and bluefish.
But Joe Giambarresi found out Tuesday that rare does not mean impossible.
Giambarresi, of Amesbury, said he was out fishing at the mouth of the river — which was rough with large, rolling waves — and was seeing some success. Giambarresi said he and friend Vance DeVincent of Dracut had caught four or five stripers and a bluefish that broke the line.
That's when they hooked what they thought was a massive striped bass.
"We thought it was a 60-pound striper," Giambarresi said.
Giambarresi said when hooked, the sturgeon took off and took almost all the line with it. He said they had to back up their boat to gain ground on the fish. Finally, he said, they reeled the fish to the boat.
"It was just the scariest, prehistoric-looking fish," he said of the 5- to 6-foot-long fish. "It was the most amazing thing to see this fish."
Last August, Jeff Hajjar, a Methuen native who now lives in Idaho, told a similar story of catching a 6-foot-long sturgeon. Hajjar, like Giambarresi, said when he hooked the fish it also quickly swam away from the boat taking loads of line with it.
"He was a big son of a gun," Hajjar said in an interview last year. "We thought we caught some kind of giant shark at first."
Kristen Ferry, a fish biologist for the state Division of Marine Fisheries, said last year that catching a sturgeon in the Merrimack is not a normal occurrence and echoed those feelings about the most recent sturgeon catch.
"I still think it is a rare thing," she said. "It is pretty unusual."
Ferry said the Atlantic sturgeon is a migratory fish and moves up and down the East Coast of the United States. She said biologists will find a sturgeon that has originated in southern states and migrated to the bays and waterways of the Northeast.
The biologist said the catch, which Giambarresi and DeVincent threw back once they realized it was a sturgeon, comes at the same time as reports as recent as yesterday of a dead sturgeon floating in the mouth of the Merrimack River. She said several people have sent in pictures of the dead fish, but as of yesterday afternoon, it had not been located by officials.
But Ferry said the dead fish and Giambarresi's fish are not the same ones. She said the dead one is much smaller and probably a different species — one that lives primarily in brackish river water.
Ironically, Giambarresi's catch likely wouldn't have happened if it weren't for high gas prices.
Giambarresi and DeVincent work together at Security Pest Elimination, which DeVincent owns, where they take off occasional afternoons to cast their lines. In years past, they made frequent trips to Halibut Point or Jeffrey's Ledge.
But with a gallon of gas for boaters nearing $5, DeVincent, who also owns the boat, said he is staying in the river much more often these days.
"The upside was there were lots of fish of all kinds (in the river)," Giambarresi wrote in an e-mail.
The origins of Atlantic sturgeon date back more than 120 million years, and the animals grow to as big as 15 feet and 800 pounds, according the Chesapeake Bay Program, a restoration partnership for that body of water, which is a popular place for sturgeon to live and spawn.
Sturgeon do not have scales but rather five rows of bony plates called scutes. They use their hard snouts to look for food along the bottom of the waterways. They typically eat mollusks and crustaceans.
The first market for sturgeon on the East Coast started in 1628 in Brunswick, Maine, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. Beyond food, the fish's skin was used as leather for clothing and book bindings.
Sturgeon are still valuable, especially the roe, which is used for caviar that can fetch more than $250 a pound.
The fish usually spawns in rivers. Juveniles stay in the fresh or brackish water for one to six years before moving out to the ocean. The fish tend to stay close to the shore when they become adults.
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