When an infamous sturgeon fisherman dies in a mysterious hunting accident, his outcast daughter returns to Wisconsin to protect her family from a caviar crime ring and repair the relationships she left behind.

SYNOPSIS:

Steve Moser, an infamous sturgeon fisherman, is shot out of his tree stand in what local authorities presume to be a hunting accident. When his daughter Elsa, a struggling artist in LA, returns to Wisconsin for the funeral, she meets a charming but awkward stranger who accidentally drops her father’s urn and inhales his ashes.

As mourners gather at her family’s Bar, Grill and Fish Processing business, Elsa is confronted by the former classmates she mocked by drawing vulgar cartoons depicting them as simple minded. Family secrets reveal themselves when Ike, her father’s fishing partner and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) employee, cautions her badass Grandma Shirley against illegally bartering caviar to attract customers.Ike’s unhinged trophy wife and wannabe mayor, Debbie, shows up and drags him out of the bar.

The next morning, Elsa visits her mother’s school where she's surprised to see Mitch, the stranger from the funeral, a DNR biologist, teaching the kids about how overfishing and illegal caviar poaching are driving sturgeon to extinction. Back at work, Mitch informs Ike, his disgruntled subordinate, that the feds are investigating a crime ring passing off Midwestern sturgeon eggs as Russian caviar. Mitch asks Ike not to discuss this with the Moser family. When the local Sheriff appears at the bar and asks to review the family’s processing records, Elsa is surprised by Grandma Shirley’s refusal to cooperate. Meanwhile, Mitch notices discrepancies in the inventory of sturgeon eggs donated to the DNR’s Sturgeon Restoration Project.

Dallas follows Debbie and seduces her in the cheese aisle at the Piggly Wiggly. She reveals that Ike, her “punk-ass” husband, and Steve were fishing partners. Dallas confronts Ike at a DNR registration booth and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t produce the caviar shipment.

While searching for clues, Elsa unearths a box of empty gold tins like those seen in articles about illegal Russian caviar. That night, she bonds with Mitch over their shared experiences as outsiders, but things fall apart when she presses him about the caviar investigation. At a meat raffle the following day, Ike spots Dallas passionately kissing Debbie and makes a pathetic attempt to fight him. Meanwhile, Mitch discovers that sturgeon eggs donated to the DNR for research are missing.

When Elsa reaches out to Mitch for help, they agree to confront Ike, but Dallas intercepts them and runs them off the road. They escape into the woods, and with the help of an old friend and a borrowed pink Cadillac, they drive to the family cabin where they find the missing caviar in an old root cellar. Ike appears and orders them at gunpoint to transfer the caviar to his boat. Dallas emerges from the woods, tackles Ike and the gun goes off killing Dallas. Elsa demands answers about her to dad and Ike spins into a jealous rage - it was his record sturgeon Steve caught in his shanty, with his spear; Mitch stole his job; and Dallas stole his wife. Grandma Shirley arrives, just as Ike admits to killing Steve when he abruptly decided to stop selling caviar to the Russians. Shirley spears him through the heart, but when she prepares to turn herself in, Elsa convinces her that people will assume it was a deadly love triangle. Will Mitch go along?

One year later, Elsa returns home with a new perspective on the community she left behind. Her secret’s safe, and as she melts into a perfect kiss with Mitch, her new project, an animated video about sturgeon, plays over the credits.

STURGEON GENERAL