Two Montana {couples} went out for a leisurely day of salmon trolling on Fort Peck Lake on Aug. 9. Fishing aboard James and Nancy Fauth’s 25-year-old pontoon boat, Tony and Emily Simonsen have been having fun with a vibrant and calm morning on the big reservoir. The one hitch was that none of them had caught a fish but.
“However simply after lunch my spinning rod got here to life off a downrigger, and line peeled off the reel,” a 68-year-old James tells Outside Life. “I knew it was a salmon, as a result of I’d been marking them deep on my sonar, and the hooked fish was so robust.”
James says that because the fish made one dogged run after one other, he was simply hoping the $29 Walmart rod-and-reel setup his Uncle Vern gifted him 15 years in the past was as much as the duty. The unique 20-pound line was nonetheless on the reel, and he’d solely used it a number of occasions earlier than then.
As he battled the fish, Nancy cranked up the downrigger ball from 80 ft deep whereas Tony manned the touchdown internet. Emily, in the meantime, recorded the motion along with her cellphone.
Photograph courtesy James Fauth
The video of the battle lasts lower than 4 minutes, and it begins as James is already at work. He says he fought the salmon for about 5 minutes whole, his rod bent into a decent bow the entire time.
James retains saying within the video that he can inform it’s a giant salmon, and possibly the heaviest one he’s ever hooked. By the point he attracts the fish near the place Tony can internet it, the entire crew is surprised.
“Oh, my goodness!” Emily exclaims because the chinook (also called a king salmon) flops into the pontoon. “It doesn’t even look actual it’s so large!”
After unhooking the salmon, which hit a green-and-white smooth plastic squid lure trolled behind a blue-and-white dodger, James weighed the fish utilizing a small hand scale.
Photograph courtesy James Fauth
“It learn 33 kilos 9 ounces, so I figured it was a state report,” says James, a retired energy firm lineman who lives in Malta. “It wouldn’t slot in my livewell, so we put it in a cooler with ice, then went again to fishing. I hoped we’d catch one other salmon. So, we went again to trolling in 130 ft of water a few mile or so from the dam, on the lookout for one other chinook.”
By 5 p.m. they nonetheless hadn’t caught one other salmon, in order that they headed again to Fort Peck Marina to attempt to weigh the fish. The marina didn’t have an authorized scale, and neither did a close-by comfort retailer. Fortunately, the clerk was prepared to assist and he contacted Steve Dalbey, a regional fisheries program supervisor for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Dalbey spoke with James and so they made a plan to satisfy on the Reynolds Market in Glasgow at 7 p.m.
As soon as there, the chinook stored maxing out the market’s small scales. Lastly, a employees member discovered a large enough scale for the fish, which weighed 32.62 kilos. It measured 38 inches lengthy with an astonishing 28-inch girth.
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James has not been formally notified by the state that his report catch has been licensed. However he’s sure the catch will high the earlier state report of 32.05 kilos, caught by Greg Haug in 2020. That fish additionally got here from Fort Peck, which is dwelling to a inhabitants of landlocked chinook due to continued stocking efforts by MFWP.
“Dalbey instructed me my salmon is unquestionably the brand new report, and he signed all of the paperwork and submitted it to the state.”
James is having his salmon mounted by Northern Anglers Taxidermy in Billings. However he didn’t have a big sufficient cooler to ship the frozen fish to them, so he made one himself out of Styrofoam and wooden.
“It’ll be over a yr earlier than I get the fish again from the taxidermist,” James says. “I made a decision to hold it in my good friend Tony’s River’s Bend Assisted residing heart that he owns in Malta. I feel the oldsters there may get pleasure from seeing it hanging on a wall, and it’s shut sufficient that I can go over and take a look at it each time I would like.”