Hailey Thomas hooked a 36-inch rainbow/cutthroat hybrid while fishing at one of Idaho’s most prestigious trout destinations on October 4, breaking the state’s catch-and-release record.
In the afternoon, Thomas and her husband, Shane, were fishing at Henrys Lake with their two children. The lake is famous for its trophy Yellowstone cutthroat trout, brook trout, and cutbow trout.
They weren’t catching much at their first spot by mid-afternoon and decided to move on. Thomas hooked a monster while raising anchor.
“Hailey did a phenomenal job fighting the fish and keeping it out of the abundant weeds, notorious for knocking large trout off the line,” Shane said in a press release.
After a stressful minute or so, I reached out and scooped up the fish. The net I usually use for chasing carp looked so small, as the fish barely fit in it.”
With its length of 36 inches and its girth of 21 inches, the cutbow is estimated to weigh between 17 and 20 pounds.
Thomas measured the trout and snapped a few quick photos before releasing it. It surpassed Ryan Ivy’s previous length record of a 30-inch hybrid caught on the Snake River in 2018.
Located on the Continental Divide, Henrys Lake is 6,000 acres of trout. Yellowstone cutthroats make up 55 percent of its trout population.
The rainbow-cutthroat hybrid fish account for about a quarter of the trout population, followed by native Yellowstone cutthroats.
A small hatchery at the lake is run by Idaho Fish and Game, which produces both pure Yellowstone cutthroats and hybrids.
In order to create hybrids that cannot reproduce, hatchery workers collect eggs from female Yellowstone cutthroats and mix them with rainbow trout milt.
Nearly one million fertilized cutbow eggs were produced by 392 female cutthroat trout during this year’s cutbow spawn in the first week of March.
Sources: Fieldstream
