iStockphoto / glxedwards
Most avid anglers will fish their entire lives and never come anywhere close to catching a trout even half this size.
Colorado angler Scott Enloe just landed what would be a new world record lake trout if it wasn’t released, weighing an astounding 73.29 pounds, on the very first day his home lake of Blue Mesa Reservoir was open for fishing.
Scott Enloe was the third person on the water when Blue Mesa Reservoir opened up for fishing on Friday, May 5th, according to Field & Stream.
The ice hadn’t even been melted for two days when the boat ramp opened at 5:30 AM. He was the third boat on the water and by 6:45 am he’d already landed a 31-pound lake trout while jigging.
31 pounds is massive but it’s got nothing on this would-be world record lake trout. This fish looks like it just swallowed a beach ball.
I’ve seen some massive trout in my years of writing about record-setting fish. But for reasons I’m having trouble articulating, this might be the most impressive fishing world record (would be or not), that I’ve ever seen. Probably because this world-record lake trout is so massive it looks like a completely new species.
Scott Enloe told Sage Marshall at Field & Stream that he’d previously caught lake trout over 40 pounds on this reservoir. Catching a fish over 50 pounds was always the ultimate goal. Never did they think a 73.29-pound world record trout was there for the taking.
Enloe says an hour after catching the 31-pounder something showed up on their radar. He told Field & Stream “We were fishing in about 40 feet of water. We saw two big fish on the fish finder. We can normally tell the size of them, but this mark was distinctively different. Usually, the marks are yellow and orange, but this one was purple and teal outlined in black. My son was like, ‘That must be two fish!’”
The massive lake trout smashed his jig and 13 minutes later he was looking at a tiny whale next to the boat. Scott Enloe was fishing with his son and it was pure jubilation after they got the fish inside the boat.
He told Field & Stream “We had stayed calm until it came into the boat, and then we came unglued. We were going in circles, hugging and high-fiving each other. We were like, ‘What just happened?’ My son was like, ‘What is it?’ I was like, ‘It’s a record! It’s a record!’ It was just too large.”
In addition to weighing 73.29 pounds, the fish also measured 47 inches long with a 37-inch girth. They weighed the fish, measured it, and let it go.
They have pictures to prove that this was the world record fish of a lifetime, and the measurements, but without taking it back to the scale they won’t have the official world record in the books. And that’s just perfectly okay to them.