BIG FISH IS ANCIENT AND ENORMOUS. Many times in her 177 years she has come close to death—stalked by panners in the gold rush of 1858, nearly crushed in the Hells Gate rock slide of 1913, almost stranded when the water of Sumas Lake was drained into the river in 1924, and threatened by a mysterious disease that killed many other sturgeon in the early 1990s. Since then, sports fishers have caught her several times, and she has led them on quite a chase. But today scientists and many others are trying to help the sturgeon survive. Now, we hope, only old age will claim her when her time comes.