Fishing season opened on April 6 on Massachusetts’ sprawling, 4,400-acre Wachusett Reservoir, and the state lake trout file was broken twice within the week. Most just lately, new pending file holder John Stamas caught and launched a 39-inch laker on April 9. The fish weighed in at roughly 20 kilos on a hand scale.
Stamas and buddy Michael Xu began fishing at daybreak. By mid-day, all they needed to present for his or her efforts was a small lake trout and a 3-pound smallmouth.
“I’m actually a smallmouth bass angler, and we get some good ones from Wachusett weighing practically 5 kilos,” Stamas advised Out of doors Life. “We had been fishing heavy football-shaped jigs for bass in an space the place some huge lakers have been caught. That’s once I acquired a powerful mid-day strike on a three-quarter-ounce, blue-and-black soccer jig with a craw plastic trailer. At first, I assumed it was an enormous smallmouth, but it surely was a lunker laker.”
Stamas used bait-casting deal with with 12-pound take a look at fluorocarbon line, because the lake is ultra-clear and deep. As a result of he makes use of a powerful reel drag, the combat was a quick and livid brawl.
“I need a fast combat with fish I launch, so I exploit a powerful drag and horse them in,” says Stamas, 30, from Leominster, Massachusetts. “My precedence is to land them rapidly, inside a minute, measure and launch them unhurt.
“The laker didn’t pull line towards my drag. But it surely was rolling on the floor and I assumed the road would break or the jig would pull out.”
Luckily, his deal with held, and he muscled the trout onto shore in simply 60 seconds. He measured and launched it rapidly, however not earlier than taking photographs to undergo the state for file functions. The 39-inch trout had a 19-inch girth, and weighed about 20 kilos on a transportable scale.
“We couldn’t get an correct weight of the fish as a result of it was wiggling rather a lot,” says Stamas. “The dimensions would learn 19 kilos, then 21 kilos. The numbers had been leaping throughout. We figured 20 kilos was about proper. Then we launched it about one minute after touchdown it.”
Xu videoed your complete fish combat and posted it to his YouTube channel.
Stamas is a daily in the case of submitting his catches to the Massachusetts Freshwater Sportfishing Awards Program, which garners award pins for anglers in the event that they qualify. Stamas has been awarded a number of pins by the state for his huge Wachusett Reservoir smallmouths, together with a particular gold pin for catching and releasing the longest Massachusetts smallmouth in 2022. He estimated that 22.5-inch smallmouth bass to weigh just below 5 kilos.
If Stamas’ 39-inch lake trout holds up as the biggest caught in Massachusetts in 2024, he’ll obtain a particular gold pin for the fish. Odds are good the fish will take that honor, because the state record lake trout is at the moment a 33-inch, 25-pound 7-ounce fish that William Roy caught from the Quabbin Reservoir in 2016.
Stamas has fished the Wachusett Reservoir tirelessly over the previous 4 years after shifting to the realm. Anglers can solely fish “Chu” from the shoreline. Boats aren’t permitted because the reservoir serves the Boston space.
“We stroll an extended technique to get to the most effective fishing spots on Chu,” Stamas explains. “It’s nothing to stroll three to 5 miles across the lake in a day of fishing.”
The Wachusett Reservoir has a 37-mile shoreline. The reservoir was impounded in 1905, and has depths of over 100 ft of air-clear water.
Stamas will get a reproduction mount of the 39-inch laker, and he already is aware of the place he’ll show it.
“I’ve acquired a spot on the wall in my workplace close to a 45-inch barracuda I caught off Miami,” he says. “I believe they’ll look fairly good collectively on that wall.”