The European Sea Sturgeon is the heaviest fish I have ever landed at Skårland Fjord, and it pays more than anything else I have caught in Fishing Planet. Mine came in at 381.436 kg and 486.1 cm, and it returned 131,411 coins along with 177,926 XP from a single fish. That is nearly three times what a Trophy Porbeagle Shark pays. This guide covers the spot, the coordinate, the heavy rig, the bait, and the timing that put this fish on the deck.
Why Target the European Sea Sturgeon?
This is the best paying fish I have found on the map, by a wide margin. My catch returned 131,411 coins and 177,926 XP in one hit. To put that in perspective, my Trophy Porbeagle Shark paid 47,628 coins and 16,139 XP, and my Trophy Meagre paid 20,412 coins. The XP figure is the part that really stands out, because 177,926 XP from a single fish is the kind of number that moves your level bar visibly at endgame. If you are grinding coins or levels at Skårland Fjord, the sturgeon is the target that makes a trip worth the fuel.
For the rest of the map, see my Skårland Fjord setup guide, and for the other big earner out here, the Porbeagle Shark guide. The lighter, easier catches are covered in my Meagre, European Hake, and Spiny Dogfish guides.
A Word About Unique Fish, Honestly
The fish I landed was logged as a Unique, which is the rarest size class in the game, above Trophy. I want to be straight with you about what that means, because plenty of guides are not. You cannot target a Unique. There is no bait, no rig, and no coordinate that makes the game hand you one. What you can do is target the species properly and put in the sessions, and the size class is decided when the fish takes.
So treat the numbers above as proof that this setup handles the species right up to its largest class, not as a promise of what your first sturgeon will weigh. A Young or Common sturgeon caught on the same rig still pays well and still counts toward your species list. Go in expecting a good fish, and let the Unique be the bonus it actually is.
About the European Sea Sturgeon
The European Sea Sturgeon is one of the largest and rarest fish in European waters. It can pass four metres and approach 400 kg, which my catch very nearly did. It was once widespread but is now found mainly in a handful of estuaries and coastal zones of the eastern Atlantic, where it wants clean, well oxygenated water over sandy or gravelly ground. It is an ancient bottom feeder that works the seabed for small fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and worms.
The game is blunt about what it takes: heavy duty gear, a strong bottom rig, and precise bait placement in deep water. Every part of that matters. This is not a fish you stumble into with a mid range rod, and it is not a fish you catch by casting somewhere vaguely deep and hoping. It also comes in all four size classes, Young, Common, Trophy, and Unique, so a sturgeon bite is never wasted.
Where to Catch European Sea Sturgeon at Skårland Fjord
This is a third distinct zone on the map, and it is worth being clear about that because Skårland Fjord is big and the wrong end of it will waste your session. I marked and caught this fish near coordinates -3719, -3745, down at the southern end of the fjord. That is a long way from Ranvika Marina, where I take Meagre, European Hake, and Spiny Dogfish around the -1300 to -2700 range, and it is nowhere near the eastern open water at 3407, -3605 where the Porbeagle Shark holds.
Take the boat south, drop a marker buoy when you arrive so you can hold and return to the spot, and fish the rig hard on the bottom. Treat the coordinate as a starting area rather than an exact pixel, because the fish moves and the productive ground is wider than a single point. This is deep water, so give the sinker time to reach the seabed before you settle in.
Best Time: Early Morning
I caught mine at 06:26, logged by the game as Early morning, under cloud with the air at 5°C and the water at 8°C, and a light south westerly around 2.8 m/s. The activity chart backs that up. Bite rate sits at its daytime high right at the start of the morning and then slides steadily through the middle of the day, before climbing hard again through the night and peaking in the small hours between about 01:00 and 05:00.
Worth noting honestly: that chart shows generalised bite rate for the water, not a species specific graph for the sturgeon. What I can tell you from my own session is that early morning produced. If you are planning a trip, the low light windows at either end of the night are where I would put my hours.
Use Forward Time to reach the window you want. Do not press Next Day, because that sells every fish in your storage, and losing a sturgeon that way would hurt more than any other fish on this map.
The Rig: Heavy Bottom Setup
This is the exact setup that landed the fish:
- Rod: PulseWave 170 SE
- Reel: AmperDrive X 24000 SE
- Main line: Glowing Mono 1.4 mm, 371 m spooled
- Leader: Colorful Fluorocarbon Leader 1.65
- Hook: Tungsten Golden Hook #18/0
- Sinker: Tungsten Sinker 1000 g
- Teaser: Torch Flashlight 17 cm
- Bait: Bluey
If you already fish my Porbeagle Shark setup, you are two items away from being ready. The rod, reel, sinker, and torch teaser are identical. All you change is the hook, stepping up from #18/0 in place of the #15/0, and the bait, swapping Bluey in for Fish Head. That is genuinely the whole difference, and it means one heavy rod covers both of the big earners on this map.
Do not be tempted to run a smaller hook. A fish approaching 400 kg with a bony, armoured mouth needs a hook with the gape and strength to hold, and the #18/0 is there for a reason. The 1000 g sinker is doing two jobs, getting the bait to the seabed quickly in deep water and keeping it planted there.
Why the Torch Flashlight Earns Its Slot
The Torch Flashlight is a luminous teaser, and down in dark deep water its glow pulls fish in from further out than your bait scent alone will manage. I run it on both my heavy Skårland rigs. It is not strictly mandatory, but on a fish this rare, anything that widens the area you are drawing from is worth the slot.
Bait: Bluey and the Alternatives
Bluey is what caught mine, and it is at the top of the sturgeon’s preferred list. It is rated X Heavy weight, which is exactly what you want on a rig built to sit on the seabed in deep water, and it doubles as a bait for Atlantic Halibut, Greenland Halibut, European Angler, Spiny Dogfish, sharks, and Ruby Snapper. That makes it an efficient thing to carry at Skårland Fjord, because a pack of Bluey keeps working even when the sturgeon does not show.
If you are out of Bluey, the sturgeon also favours Large Fish Strips and Black Lugworms, Crab and Peeler Crab, Giant Tiger Prawn and Gulf Shrimp, and Mussel Meat and Razor Shell. Note that this is a bait fish only. No lures, no trolling. It is bottom tackle and patience.
Landing a Fish This Big
I fished this from the Valkyrie Fishing Boat, which is the vessel the Norway release built around exactly this kind of catch. Its crane is what gets a fish of this size out of the water and onto the deck, and seeing a nearly five metre sturgeon hanging off the gantry is one of the better moments the game has given me. The boat lists a 720 kg maximum for a single fish, so it has plenty of headroom over the 381 kg I brought in.
Keep an eye on your total load as well. Mine was sitting at around 116 kg of 3500 kg capacity, so there was no issue, but if you have been filling the boat with smaller fish first, check you have room before you hook something enormous.
Common Mistakes
Fishing the wrong end of the map. The sturgeon spot is in the far south, around -3719, -3745. If you anchor near Ranvika Marina where the Meagre and Hake are, you are in completely the wrong water.
Going in with light or mid range gear. The game tells you plainly that this fish wants heavy duty tackle. A rod that cannot lift a 400 kg class fish will lose it, and you may not get a second chance in that session.
Undersizing the hook. A #18/0 looks absurd next to normal tackle. It is the right call here.
Fishing through the middle of the day. Bite rate drops steadily from morning through the afternoon. Use Forward Time to get back to a low light window rather than grinding through the dead hours.
Pressing Next Day. It sells everything in storage. On a map where one fish can be worth over 130,000 coins, that is an expensive mis-click.
Letting your licence lapse. I run the Advanced licence here. Fishing without a valid one just burns coins on fines.