Kaleb Nelson has fished Scofield Reservoir southeast of Salt Lake Metropolis for a lot of of his life. He’d always acknowledged regarding the lake because of he’d heard his grandfather focus on it when he was a toddler.
“My grandpa, Brent Nelson, grew up in Clear Creek near Scofield Reservoir, and he always suggested me about these giant, pretty tiger trout that lived there,” Kaleb tells Outdoors Life. “So, a pair buddies and I decided to ice fish there last December.”
Nelson had fished the lake all through every summer season and winter, and he knew it properly adequate to have a fairly good considered the place the trout could possibly be holding. On Dec. 9, he and his mates drilled 4 holes over a grassy bottom in roughly six toes of water. Nelson’s buddies each picked a spot to fish via whereas he used two fully totally different jigging rods to alternate between the two totally different holes.
“I had a heavy ice spinning rod organize, and a light-tackle one,” says Nelson, a 22-year-old constructing endeavor engineer who lives in Worth. “I was merely swimming a 3-inch-long white tube jig above some bottom weeds with the sunshine outfit, and wham — I purchased successful.”
He fought the fish for spherical half-hour and had a fairly good feeling it was giant tiger trout — a hybrid species that’s a cross between a brown trout and a brook trout. Stopping a heavy fish for that prolonged is difficult on cope with because the highway wears on the sharp edges of the ice, nevertheless Nelson says the 10-pound braid he was using held up all through the battle. The trout took about half of that line off his spinning reel all through one amongst its longer runs, and when Nelson lastly observed the trout, he wasn’t constructive he’d have the power to land it.
“After I purchased the fish near the underside of the 8-inch diameter ice hole I was nervous it wouldn’t match. Nonetheless my mates have been there to help me, so we pulled it via. Then we merely started laughing and celebrating [because of] how giant it was.”
Study Subsequent: Use Giant Baits to Catch Huge Lake Trout Through The Ice
The anglers took a few photos of the trout and taped it at 32 inches prolonged. Then they pulled the jig from its mouth and launched it into Scofield Reservoir. The fish was out of the water for just some minutes and swam away healthful, Nelson says.
Although they on no account weighed the fish, the anglers estimated it was spherical 10 kilos. They saved fishing via the afternoon, catching and releasing a dozen smaller tiger trout. Utah legal guidelines allow anglers to keep up up two tiger trout per day, with only one over 22 inches, nevertheless Nelson says he’s always put the fish once more.
“They’re merely extraordinarily pretty, which is why we launch them.”
And since the Utah Division of Wildlife Belongings maintains a catch-and-release class in its fishing data e book, he was nonetheless ready to ship in an utility to the corporate for a model new state doc. (This included pictures exhibiting the trout’s measurements and written verification from a witness.) The DWR launched the catch’s certification Tuesday. Nelson’s 32-inch fish was giant sufficient to interchange the standing doc, nevertheless merely barely. It was merely half an inch longer than the sooner catch-and-release doc caught in 2022.
Study Subsequent: State-Report Tiger Trout Disqualified On account of Angler Didn’t Have a Fishing License
The DWR maintains a separate report of “catch and maintain” data, and the standing doc in that class measured over 37 inches prolonged and weighed 19 kilos 2 ounces. That tiger trout was moreover caught from Scofield Reservoir. For comparability, the IGFA all-tackle world doc for the species weighed 27 kilos 6 ounces and was set a pair years prior to now by an angler in Washington State.
“I’ll have a reproduction mount manufactured from the fish, and may take pleasure in wanting that giant, pretty trout for a really very long time to return again,” Nelson says. “My grandpa loves them too, and he was further excited than anyone about my catch.”