It had been a slow, Oct. 4 day of trout fishing for Hailey Thomas of Rigby, Idaho and her family on renowned Henrys Lake, Idaho, according to a report from the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
Hailey, her husband Shane and two young children had caught a few trout, but nothing noteworthy from the acclaimed 6,000-acre lake located near the town of West Yellowstone at the northwest corner of Yellowstone National Park.
Then as they began to move their anchored boat, Hailey hooked a heavy fish.
“Hailey did a phenomenal job fighting the fish and keeping it out of the abundant weeds, notorious for knocking large trout off the line,” said her husband Shane, a veteran angler with a state record fish of his own. “After a stressful minute or so, I reached out and scooped up the fish. The net I usually use looked so small, as the fish barely fit in.”
Shane netted Hailey’s colorful cutbow and yelled, “That’s the biggest trout I’ve seen in my life.”
Shane knew Hailey’s fish was a special giant so they put her colorful rainbow-cutthroat trout hybrid in their boat’s live well to revive it.
Believing the huge trout could be a record catch, they carefully measured and photographed the fish, then released it back into the lake.
Photos documenting the size of the trout were submitted to the state fisheries officials who have now certified her catch as a new state record cutbow hybrid trout. The fish measured 36-inches long, with a 21-inch girth, with an estimated weight of up to 20-pounds.
Hailey’s trout handily betters the previous Idaho state catch-and-release record cutbow trout of 30-inches, which was caught and released by Ryan Ivy in 2018 from Idaho’s Snake River.
Henrys Lake is shallow and fertile, and has produced numerous trophy fish, including cutthroats, brook trout and hybrid cutbows.
Idaho’s state record cutbow trout is also the IGFA All-Tackle world record for the species. It was caught by angler Mark Adams in 2011 from the state’s American Falls Reservoir, a Snake River impoundment located southwest of Idaho Falls.
