You never know what you plan as a regular day of fishing might bring; sometimes the fish of a lifetime comes out of nowhere and surprises the heck out of you. That’s what happened to Steve Jones, a 72-year-old lifelong angler who was dipping his line in Shaver Lake in California on May 16 when he pulled in the lake-record brown trout.
Jones’ fish measured a stunning 37.5 inches and weighed in at 24.48 pounds. The catch reportedly surpasses the previous record of 18.75 pounds set in the 1980s. He says a couple fish have come close in the past year, but didn’t quite break the margin.
“There’s been other people who have caught some in the 18 to 19-pound class that weren’t really recorded on a certified scale,” Jones told the local Fox News affiliate. “I did take [my fish] to Shaver Sport, and they have a certified scale for weighing the fish to document the record.”
He caught the monster on relatively light tackle, the setup he regularly uses for trout and kokanee salmon, including a Squid Hoochie lure paired with a Sling Blade Dodger flasher.
“When I first caught it, I thought I was maybe hooked up on the bottom, and then I realized that my fishing lines were only down 20 feet, and I was in 90 feet of water,” Jones said in the interview. “So then, the second thought was, ‘Oh, I’m caught up on a big log or something.’ I tried to get back closer to it. It started really fighting and going away, and and it took a good 30 minutes to to get it back to the boat.
“I tried to bring it in by the gills, but I got nicked by a sharp tooth, and the trout took off again,” he told Western Outdoor News. “The next time it came in, it was spent, and I hoisted it into the boat, couldn’t believe it, and placed it on ice to go get it weighed. I reeled in my second rod which had a small kokanee on it for limits and went to Shaver Lake Sports for a weight.”
“And I got it back in and realized my net wasn’t anywhere close to being big enough to handle the fish, so I had to reach down and get it, leaning over the edge of the boat.”
“I’ve been fishing Shaver Lake since I was a little guy with my dad, and off and on pretty much all my life, and other lakes, as well,” Jones added. “And I fish a lot in the ocean for salmon and halibut and sea bass and tuna and that sort of thing. So, I just do a lot of fishing.”
Jones said the California Department of Fish and Wildlife doesn’t keep records for individual lakes (Jones’ fish missed the state record brown trout by about 2.5 pounds), but he will be sending the department some scales from the fish so they can determine its age.
“I made in the fish to be probably 10 to 15 years old. But once they age it with the scales, they’ll know for sure,” Jones said.
