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Reservoir fisherman doesn't let ‘big one' get away
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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| Randy Merritt of Cody shows off the 30-pound lake trout he caught ice fishing Feb. 18 on Buffalo Bill Reservoir. Merritt calls the catch “once-in-a-lifetime.” (Courtesy photo) |
When it comes to fish stories Randy Merritt is already a winner.
But his story - of catching a 30-pound lake trout through the ice on Buffalo Bill Reservoir on the morning of Presidents Day, Feb. 18 - is all true and he can prove it.
So big was the fish that Merritt, 25, and his three fishing buddies had to chip a bigger hole in the ice to land the lunker.
And when he took the fish home to show his son Kash, who will be 2 in March, the fish was longer than the boy is tall.
“He kept saying, ‘fish,' and poking it,” said Merritt, who recently moved to Cody with his wife Sunny. The couple also has a 2-month-old daughter, Kali.
The fish likely is older than Merritt. It was estimated to be 30-40 years old, said fisheries biologist Jason Burckhardt of the Game and Fish Department who works on the reservoir.
Burckhardt said when Merritt provides him with a certain bone from the fish's head, its exact age can be determined since the bone grows a new ring each year, like a tree.
“It's a really big fish,” said Merritt, who is an engineer for WYDOT in Cody.
“It's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
He caught the lake trout on only his fourth time ice fishing this winter, using a three-quarter ounce jig head and fishing off an underwater shelf about 30 feet from the surface of the reservoir.
The fish measured 38 inches long and its girth at the dorsal fin was about 24 inches.
“I was fishing in 28 feet of water, according to my fish finder, and we had been catching and releasing 20-22 inch lake trout and a few smaller rainbows all morning,” Merritt said.
“Most of the fish were coming in off the bottom, and I would guess I was fishing about six inches to one foot off the bottom when he hit my jig.
“He did it quickly, barely even showing up on the fish finder. I fought him for nearly 20 minutes before getting him through the ice,” Merritt added.
“I had him at the ice two times, but he would not cooperate and dove back to the bottom.”
To get the big fish through the ice, Merritt said, “we had to chip a bigger hole, and then a friend was able to get a hand in his gills and pull him out of the water.”
After landing the lake trout, “we did have a few bigger fish appear on the fish finder, but none that were hungry enough to take a bite.”
Merritt's big fish now reposes in a taxidermist's freezer, awaiting preparation for mounting. The taxidermist probably will take a cast of the fish, make a model and paint it, giving the still-frozen real McCoy back to its owner for eventual consumption.
“He'll be oily, but I'll eat him,” Merritt said.
Burckhardt said there are other large lake trout in Buffalo Bill Reservoir.
“We've got a booming lake trout population,” he said. “We've sampled several in that size class.”
The biologist said lake trout are a voracious predatory species, which is why they are being eliminated from Yellowstone Lake where they dine too often on prized native Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
“They are predators,” Burckhardt said. “There's quite a large biological cost to that fish.”
Merritt's trout likely consumed “hundreds of cutthroat trout and rainbows in Buffalo Bill” in its lifetime, the biologist said.
But in his 30-40 years the fish also most likely ate many of the reservoir's non-game species, including white and long-nose suckers.
The presence of the suckers is “one reason we don't have issues with lake trout,” Burckhardt said, adding that there is a “low abundance of long-nose suckers in Yellowstone Lake.”
Buffalo Bill also is home to lake chub, a non-game fish that remains at minnow size, and yellow perch.
“Lake trout were stocked in the reservoir after completion of the dam” unlike cutthroat, which have been in the drainage for about 8,000 years, Burckhardt said.
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