If you don't know the reference, it's from The Song of Hiawatha (Longfellow), the section describing how Hiawatha went fishing to catch the King of Fishes, the great sturgeon Mishe-Nahma.
Now, quick investigation revealed that lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes haven't been caught nearly as big as the legendary Mishe-Nahma, which was big enough to do what it did to Hiawatha in the epic poem. (I don't want to give the story away if you haven't read it -- you should! Broaden your cultural horizons!) But hey -- Gitchee Gumee was Lake Superior, and Lake Superior is BIG. Not Caspian Sea big, where 18-foot, 4400 pound behemoths once lived (the monsters are probably gone), but still, who knows for sure? Probably not, but they do get big.
And though they are far more rare now than they were, they still exist. And they still get pretty big.
240-pound sturgeon caught in Detroit River among biggest ever recorded in US
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