“He all the time instructed me about these huge, stunning tiger trout that lived there”
Kaleb Nelson with the 32-inch tiger trout that set a brand new Utah state report. <p>{Photograph} courtesy Kaleb Nelson</p>
Kaleb Nelson has fished Scofield Reservoir southeast of Salt Lake Metropolis for many of his life. He’d all the time identified in regards to the lake as a result of he’d heard his grandfather speak about it when he was a child.
“My grandpa, Brent Nelson, grew up in Clear Creek close to Scofield Reservoir, and he all the time instructed me about these huge, stunning tiger trout that lived there,” Kaleb tells Out of doors Life. “So, a pair buddies and I made a decision to ice fish there final December.”
Nelson had fished the lake throughout each summer season and winter, and he knew it nicely sufficient to have a fairly good thought of the place the trout can be holding. On Dec. 9, he and his associates drilled 4 holes over a grassy backside in roughly six toes of water. Nelson’s buddies every picked a gap to fish via whereas he used two totally different jigging rods to alternate between the 2 different holes.
“I had a heavy ice spinning rod arrange, and a light-tackle one,” says Nelson, a 22-year-old building undertaking engineer who lives in Worth. “I used to be simply swimming a 3-inch-long white tube jig above some backside weeds with the sunshine outfit, and wham — I obtained successful.”
He fought the fish for round half-hour and had a fairly good feeling it was huge tiger trout — a hybrid species that’s a cross between a brown trout and a brook trout. Combating a heavy fish for that lengthy is hard on sort out as the road wears on the sharp edges of the ice, however Nelson says the 10-pound braid he was utilizing held up in the course of the battle. The trout took about half of that line off his spinning reel throughout certainly one of its longer runs, and when Nelson lastly noticed the trout, he wasn’t positive he’d be capable of land it.
“Once I obtained the fish close to the underside of the 8-inch diameter ice gap I used to be anxious it wouldn’t match. However my associates had been there to assist me, so we pulled it via. Then we simply began laughing and celebrating [because of] how huge it was.”
Learn Subsequent: Use Big Baits to Catch Giant Lake Trout Through The Ice
The anglers took just a few images of the trout and taped it at 32 inches lengthy. Then they pulled the jig from its mouth and launched it into Scofield Reservoir. The fish was out of the water for just a few minutes and swam away wholesome, Nelson says.
Though they by no means weighed the fish, the anglers estimated it was round 10 kilos. They saved fishing via the afternoon, catching and releasing a dozen smaller tiger trout. Utah regulations permit anglers to maintain up two tiger trout per day, with just one over 22 inches, however Nelson says he’s all the time put the fish again.
{Photograph} courtesy Kaleb Nelson
“They’re simply extremely stunning, which is why we launch them.”
And because the Utah Division of Wildlife Sources maintains a catch-and-release class in its fishing data e book, he was nonetheless in a position to ship in an utility to the company for a brand new state report. (This included pictures displaying the trout’s measurements and written verification from a witness.) The DWR introduced the catch’s certification Tuesday. Nelson’s 32-inch fish was sufficiently big to exchange the standing report, however simply barely. It was simply half an inch longer than the earlier catch-and-release report caught in 2022.
Learn Subsequent: State-Record Tiger Trout Disqualified Because Angler Didn’t Have a Fishing License
The DWR maintains a separate checklist of “catch and maintain” data, and the standing report in that class measured over 37 inches lengthy and weighed 19 kilos 2 ounces. That tiger trout was additionally caught from Scofield Reservoir. For comparability, the IGFA all-tackle world report for the species weighed 27 kilos 6 ounces and was set a couple years ago by an angler in Washington State.
“I’ll have a reproduction mount fabricated from the fish, and can take pleasure in wanting that huge, stunning trout for a very long time to come back,” Nelson says. “My grandpa loves them too, and he was extra excited than anybody about my catch.”
