The Story of Idaho’s New Record Tiger Trout

Christensen was fishing Montpelier Reservoir in the southeast corner of Idaho on June 1st when he caught the 9.13-pound fish. “It was by far the best day I’ve had,” Christensen told MeatEater following the catch. Though Montpelier is a reservoir Christensen is intimately familiar with, he hadn’t fished it in a few years. The last time he fished it, he says, it was full of planter-sized rainbows and tiger trout.

But in just a few years, the tables turned toward bigger fish. According to Idaho Department of Fish and Game stocking records, biologists began planting the reservoir with tiger trout in 2016. According to Christensen’s conversations with biologists, the initial batch contained a handful of fish up to 18 inches, but subsequent annual stockings have only been fish in the six- to 12-inch range. The fishes’ primary forage in the lake is perch, although the bigger specimens are known to prey on kokanee and rainbows, which are also planted in the reservoir.

When Christensen took to the shores in June, he wasn’t sure what to expect. But the bar was quickly set high when he caught a 6-pound, 10-ounce tiger trout right off the bat. Then he hooked into the state record, as he plainly describes: “I caught the six-pounder, and I threw it in the cooler because I was going to bring it home and have it mounted because it was the biggest one I’d caught. Then I went down a little bit further and caught that state record.”

Because tiger trout (a brook trout/brown trout hybrid) are sterile and have no chance of reproducing, most anglers have little hesitation keeping a couple of fish. Christensen was no exception. “I just wanted to bring it home because I was going to eat the other one and mount the big one,” he said. At the time, he had a small spring scale with him and weighed the fish at somewhere in the eight-pound range. Then he called the local Fish and Game officer to get it certified. It beat the previous record—8.3 pounds, also recently caught from Montpelier Reservoir—by a huge margin. According to the biologist Christensen talked with, though, there are even larger fish in the lake, and with a huge amount of viable prey, they’re only going to get bigger.

“I noticed this year going up there that I didn’t catch one single perch, which was rare,” recounts Christensen. “And then, when I actually caught that smaller one, I looked in his stomach and it had four or five good-sized perch and what was either an eight-inch kokanee or planter rainbow.” Christensen suspects that both of his trophy fish were planted in the initial 2016 stocking, but can’t say for sure.

As for the status of the record fish, it’s still sitting in Christensen’s freezer. He plans to get a fiberglass replica made, and then grill it with butter and herbs, like he already did with the smaller one. “It was really good,” he said. In the meantime, though, he’ll still be plying the waters of Montpelier, looking for something even bigger.

Images via Austin Christensen.