The angler’s 30-minute battle with the fish performed out simply miles upstream of one of many deadliest battlefields in American historical past
Jean-Phillipe Lartigue holds up the brand new Maryland state-record rainbow trout. {Photograph} courtesy Jean-Phillipe Lartigue
Retired fisheries biologist Jean-Phillipe Lartigue caught an absolute pig of a rainbow trout from Maryland’s Antietam Creek on Saturday. Measuring greater than 30 inches lengthy and weighing 17.44 kilos, Lartigue’s trout shatters the earlier state document — a 14.2-pounder caught in 1987.
Lartigue caught the massive trout from a public stretch of Antietam Creek that flows by Satan’s Spine Park in Washington County. Historical past buffs will acknowledge the creek as the positioning of a pivotal battle that befell in the course of the Civil Battle. Nonetheless thought of the bloodiest single-day battle in American historical past, the Battle of Antietam was fought simply miles downstream of the county park close to the city of Sharpsburg.
Waging a unique type of battle altogether, Lartigue fought the large trout for half-hour earlier than he was capable of land it on his personal. Whereas the avid stream fisherman has caught large trout all around the world, he says the 17-plus-pound rainbow he landed over the weekend was a unique animal.
“I’ve caught different large trout to 10 kilos, however this fish was the most important I’ve taken,” Lartigue tells Out of doors Life. “It jumped twice, and I used to be very anxious about dropping it as a result of I used to be utilizing gentle 8-pound take a look at line.”
His light-line setup included a specialised 12-foot rod with an additional supple tip paired with a spinning reel. Lartigue added a small break up shot to the 8-pound monofilament chief and used a No. 8 hook baited with an earthworm he’d dug out of his personal yard in Bethesda.
Lartigue is French however he lived and labored as a biologist in Morocco. Fishing in each Europe and northern Africa, he turned an professional on the European technique of dead-drifting flies and pure baits with extra-long rods. These lengthy rods assist anglers management their drifts with extra precision. Their delicate, springy ideas additionally assist shield gentle strains from breaking, which was essential in serving to Lartigue land his record-breaking fish over the weekend.
“I believed I’d lose it as quickly as I noticed it leap,” he says. “The creek has a number of rocks that it might have reduce the road on. There was a bridge over the creek with abutments, so I needed to maintain the trout away from these too … However after a [long] struggle it drained and I used to be capable of transfer the fish into shallow water, wade out, and seize it.”
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As a result of he didn’t have a web on him, Lartigue actually did should “seize” the trout, and he reduce his fingers on its jaw within the course of. By the point he walked again to his automotive, a crowd of onlookers had already gathered there to gawk on the fats fish. A couple of of them shared some recommendation on find out how to weigh and measure the trout, so Lartigue contacted the Maryland Division of Pure Assets and introduced his catch to an authorized scale at Ernst’s Nation Market in Clear Spring.
The rainbow trout measured 32 inches lengthy and tipped the scales at 17.44 kilos. The DNR’s director of fisheries John Mullican confirmed these measurements and the agency officially declared Lartigue’s fish a brand new state document on Tuesday.
Whereas some anglers might need chosen to mount the fish or get a duplicate made, Lartigue went a unique route.
“We ate it,” he says, “and it was scrumptious.”
