The Largest Trout Of My Life

Paul is my friend who introduced me to the good fishing on the Weber River and also Sportsman’s Paradise so when he invited to try out a private lake on a nearby farm for large trout, I was definitely interested. 

I assembled the typical flies for small lake or pond trout to imitate leaches, scuds, minnows and terrestrials such as grasshoppers and beetles and spiders.  I gathered up a 6 weight for a hopper dropper rig and my 7 weight for streamers. 

As we arrived at the lake I thought I may have gone overboard by selecting heavier weight rods but as I got out and saw a couple of trout cruising, I realized I had made the right choice.  The fish were large.  I started out with a beetle and a scud as a dropper.  At first some trout came and checked out the beetle but didn’t even take a look at the scud.  I clipped off the scud and continued around the pond with just the beetle.   Casting into some riffles, I got a hit.  

It ended up being a gorgeous male tiger trout in spawning colors.  

A few casts later I caught what looked like its mate.  

OK, tiger trout are sterile but they still try.  A tiger trout is a hybrid between a brook trout and a brown.

Geoff, another friend from work; gave me a couple of streamers that he had tied for me to try out a few months earlier on the Wipers at Willard bay.  

These streamers weren’t very bulky but I noticed as I stripped them in that they gave the impression of bulk and looked just like live minnows.   

Another thing I like about Geoff’s streamer is that they would remain suspended in the water column even if I stopped stripping.  With the typical wooly buggers that I commonly use with a bead head, the fly drops to the bottom if I stop stripping in line or I strip too slowly. 

Continuing around the lake, I noticed some larger fish cruising a little further out.  After a couple of retrieves where I only got them to follow, but not commit to striking; I finally got a hard strike from a fish coming up from the depths.  Paul and his Border-Aussie Addie could tell by the fight and the bend in the rod that this was a monster.  I would fight to bring the fish into the shore on each side of me only to have it swim back out or swim into the weeds where we couldn’t reach it even with my long handled net.  After a long battle we finally netted it.  Removing the streamer from the side of its mouth, I quickly lifted it up for a photo.  With the net, put it back into the water to rest.  

Bringing out the tape measure I pulled the fish onto the bank for a quick moment to measure - 26 inches!  

This was the largest trout of my life.