Trout record stood for 75 years in Colorado — then was broken 3 times in 5 months
It was a record year for brook trout, Colorado wildlife officials said.
Not only was 2022 the 125th anniversary of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, it was the year anglers broke the 75-year record for the largest brook trout caught, officials said in a news release.
The first record-breaker, Tim Daniel, reeled in a 7.84-pound brook trout in May, officials said. Daniel’s 23.35-inch fish, with a girth of 15.375 inches, “broke the previous state record of 7.63 pounds from a brook trout caught in 1947 out of Upper Cataract Lake in Summit County,” officials said.
Now Daniel’s record has actually been broken twice since then — once unofficially — and both anglers did so from the same lake in Colorado, officials said.
Most recently on Oct. 8, Matt Smiley caught an 8-pound, 9-ounce brook trout from Waterdog Lake in Uncompahgre National Forest, according to the release.
The fish was 26.25 inches long with a girth of 16 inches, the release said.
“The experience of this catch has been surreal,” Smiley said in the release. “It’s a really special fish.”
It was tough for him to decide between keeping the fish or letting it go, as he said he’s done with “so many over the years.”
“It was one of those deals where I made a quick decision and wanted to give this fish the recognition it deserves,” he said.
He battled with the fish, nearly lost it and finally reeled it in and put it in his backpack for the 3.9-mile hike back to the post office, where he took it to get weighed.
The weekend before, Larry Vickers of Lake City caught an 8.22-pound brook trout, but didn’t go through the certification process, officials said. He “decided to eat it to not let the meat go to waste,” but the news spread when aquatic biologist Dan Brauch was notified of the catch.
Brauch met Smiley over the weekend to inspect the brook trout and declared it the new state record brook trout.
The biologist said he isn’t surprised the fish came from Waterdog Lake, even though it’s a smaller body of water.
“It’s not a lake that handles a lot of use or fishing pressure and is difficult to access,” he explained. “Seeing two record fish in one week caught from there, it’s a cool story.”
The brook trout “is a member of the char genus of the trout and salmonid family,” and was introduced to Colorado in 1872, officials said.
“It is a beautifully colored fish with pink or red spots surrounded by blue halos along the sides and a distinctive marbled pattern over an olive-green back,” officials said.
It’s native to the northeastern U.S. and often grows between 11 to 23 inches long.
With the brook trout record broken, “the oldest fishing record in Colorado is for white bass, dating back to 1963,” officials said in the release.
The state’s oldest trout record dates back to 1964 for native cutthroat, officials said.
Smiley said it was tough for him to decide to keep the fish. In the decade he’s been chasing backcountry brook trout, he said he’s come close to breaking the record more than once.
“I’ve let some really big ones go, and then you see them later and age has not been kind to them as they’ve regressed and gone the other way when they aren’t the nutrients they need to maintain that size,” he said. “We learn none of them live forever, but it’s just a crazy deal when it all happens at once and you have to make that quick call.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2022 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Trout record stood for 75 years in Colorado — then was broken 3 times in 5 months."
