Yearly, three long-time fishing buddies meet up in both North Carolina or Tennessee to trout fish. On the afternoon of June 28, the trio launched their 14-foot johnboat with a jet outboard into the South Fork of the Holston River and ran upstream to the Boone Lake Dam Tailwater in northeast Tennessee.
“We needed massive trout, and we knew the shallow, rocky space under the dam was a first-rate spot for them when dam generators are on, and so they have been,” angler Charles Fulton, 45, tells Outside Life. “It’s a tricky place to fish as a result of it’s shallow, and harmful with boulders and swift present. You gotta have life preservers on more often than not.”
Fulton and his North Carolina friends, Robert Benfield and Meade Forbes, ran their boat up into the swift water under the dam and began casting jerk-bait plugs with spinning sort out. They held their boat within the swift present with the outboard motor and the trolling motor on the bow.
“We hooked a number of massive, robust fish however we had a tough time placing any within the boat,” says Fulton, a water supervisor for town of Louisville, Mississippi. “Then I hooked a pleasant 5-pound brown trout and bought it within the boat. Then one in every of my buddies caught and boated a 7-pound rainbow trout.”
The boys additionally noticed an enormous brown that adopted a lure.
“That fish was over 15 kilos, and we knew we couldn’t deal with it if it struck. But it surely dove and disappeared.”
Then, round 4:30 p.m., Fulton forged a 5-inch jerkbait into a piece of swift water and one thing massive struck it. He battled the fish on braided 20-pound take a look at with a monofilament chief.
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“It was a lot stronger and fought more durable than the brown trout I’d already caught,” he says. “It by no means jumped, although, and a pair minutes later I bought it near the boat, and Benfield scooped it up within the internet. The trout was not completely happy about being caught. It tore the again hook out of my plug after we put it within the boat.”
Fulton thought his trout was a rainbow. However Benfield acknowledged the distinctive orange slashes on the underside of its decrease jaw, and instructed Fulton it was a cutthroat.
“Robbie fishes that tailrace loads, and he knew the state report was smaller,” Fulton says.
The anglers checked that report on their cell telephones — a cutthroat that weighed 4 kilos 12 ounces and was additionally caught within the Boone tailwaters by 10-year-old Palmer Tipton in July 2023 — and began making cellphone calls. But it surely was after enterprise hours by then, and the fishermen couldn’t join with state officers on find out how to proceed with Fulton’s report measurement cutthroat trout. In order that they stored fishing till darkish.
“After we bought accomplished fishing and hauled the boat out of the water, we knew we needed to find an authorized scale to weigh my trout,” Fulton mentioned. “We had hassle finding a spot to weigh the fish till we bought to the H&H Market in Elizabethton.”
There, on licensed scales, the fish weighed 6 kilos 9 ounces — practically two kilos heavier than the present report. Fulton’s fish measured 22 inches lengthy with a 14.75-inch girth.
The buddies put the fish on ice till it could possibly be inspected by state officers. Solely July 2, Tennessee Wildlife Assets Company fisheries biologist Sally Petre positively recognized the trout as a cutthroat and verified the catch as the brand new state report.
Cutthroat trout usually are not native to Tennessee. They’re a Western state import which were stocked in a number of Tennessee rivers. In 2021, 2,500 cutthroats have been stocked within the Boone tailrace space, and a few of these fish are resurfacing now.
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Cutthroats within the tailrace have accomplished nicely, in response to Petre and TWRA plans to inventory extra this 12 months. Different areas across the state additionally could also be stocked with the hard-fighting trout.
“Cutthroat trout are actually lovely, and pictures of my fish simply don’t do it justice,” says Fulton. “I’m going to have the trout mounted by a taxidermist. And you’ll wager we’ll be again after them once more … Fishing is in my blood, it’s what I reside for.”