Scott Enloe of Gunnison, Colorado had a outstanding day on the water on Friday, Could 5, when he boated a possible world-record lake trout.
Enloe was fishing at Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado’s largest physique of water and a recognized hotspot for giant trout. It was the primary day this yr that boaters might entry the lake. “The boat ramp opened on Friday morning at 5:30 a.m. for the primary time this yr,” Enloe tells Area & Stream. “Our ice had simply melted off on Wednesday. We had been third in line to place in.
Enloe was fishing together with his son Hunter, a information for Sport Fish Colorado. Hunter was the primary one on the board that morning, catching a 31-pounder at round 6:45 a.m. “We jig fish,” explains Enloe. “We don’t ever troll. We’ve fished the lake for a number of years now and have realized the locations to go the place large fish hang around. We catch quite a lot of 30-plus-pound fish. We’ve damaged the 40-pound mark. We had been all the time seeking to break the 50-pound mark.”
About an hour later, the father-son duo noticed one thing unusual on their sonar. “We had been fishing in about 40 ft of water. We noticed two large fish on the fish finder. We are able to usually inform the dimensions of them, however this mark was distinctively completely different,” says Enloe. “Normally, the marks are yellow and orange, however this one was purple and teal outlined in black. My son was like, ‘That should be two fish!’”
“Then my line popped. I knew it ate the jig,” says Enloe. “Massive lake trout are infamous for coming straight to the floor, and this one did that, then went on an excessive dive. I believed it seemed like a 50-pounder. I didn’t know I used to be 23 kilos off…I’ve killed quite a lot of deer and elk, however as soon as they get a sure measurement, like a whitetail over 200 inches, I can’t choose them, as a result of it’s not frequent to see. This was like that.”
The fish took out a bunch of drag and spent some time sticking near the underside. Enloe was utilizing an Okuma rod with an Abu Garcia baitcasting reel spooled with 10-pound Segar fluorocarbon—which made it onerous to maneuver such a heavy fish. The fish had bit a locally-made GSO Fishing Jig made with premium Trokar hooks.
After a 13-minute back-and-forth struggle, Enloe managed to convey the fish to the floor. Then, it took a number of tries to convey the whopper fish onto the boat as a result of it didn’t match simply into their web—regardless of utilizing the most important one Frabill makes. However finally, Enloe and his son managed to heave it aboard their boat.
“My son’s precise phrases had been ‘mega, monster, large.’ And it was,” says Enloe. “We had stayed calm till it got here into the boat, after which we got here unglued. We had been entering into circles, hugging and high-fiving one another. We had been like, ‘What simply occurred?’ My son was like, ‘What’s it?’ I used to be like, ‘It’s a document! It’s a document!’ It was simply too massive.”
Enloe instantly knew he needed to launch the fish, as he does with all large lakers. The fish was too large to suit into the dwell effectively, however he was in a position to match its head and gills in it whereas they received able to measure and weigh it. The fish taped out at 47 inches lengthy and had a girth of 37 inches. The fish broke one scale, however the different put it at 73.29 inches. The fish stands to set a number of IGFA world information, besting each the all-tackle weight document, a 72-pounder caught within the Northwest Territories in 1995, and the all-tackle size document, which is shared between two 43-inchers additionally caught in Canada.
Learn Subsequent: The Greatest Trout Ever Caught
After snapping pictures and taking measurements of the fish, Enloe launched it. He says the fish swam off robust, and so they watched it descend again to the underside of the lake on their sonar. After making the epic catch, Enloe and his son known as it a day and headed house, understanding the epic catch can be next-to-impossible to prime.
“We’ll be again on the market sooner or later quickly catching 30- and 40-pounders and loving it,” he says. “However proper now, I’m simply overwhelmed by what occurred.”
