Idaho’s deepest water physique, Lake Pend Oreille, is stuffed with mysteries and large fish. The massive glacial lake, which additionally holds the title of the fifth deepest lake in America, covers almost 150 sq. miles of the Idaho panhandle and reaches 1,158 ft at its lowest level. (That’s roughly equal to the Empire State Constructing.) The lake is so large and bottomless that the U.S. Navy tests submarines on Pend Oreille (pronounced Pond-uh-RAY). Rumor has it there’s nonetheless a sunken sub down there someplace.
Kyle Hatrock, of close by Coeur d’Alene, was plumbing these depths on Feb. 1, when he and his buddies caught and launched an absolute large of a cutthroat trout. The 27-inch Westslope cutty was simply declared a brand new state file by the Idaho Division of Fish and Recreation, beating out the previous catch-and-release record by two inches.
It additionally would have blown the state weight file out of the water, had they saved it. However state regs prohibit anglers from conserving cutthroats on Pend Oreille. Hatrock didn’t reply to a request for remark from Outside Life.
“We’d simply received all of the traces out when not 10 minutes later, one pole begins singing out the road,” Hatrock stated, in response to IDFG’s announcement. “The primary run took out 450 feet-plus for about 15-20 minutes, and as quickly because it hit the web, my buddy began freaking out, saying ‘That’s the most important freaking cutty I’ve ever seen!’”
Because the company additionally factors out, Hatrock’s large cutthroat “reinforces Lake Pend Oreille’s popularity as Idaho’s high trophy trout fishery.” Taking a look at Idaho’s record books, the lake has produced not less than 4 record-sized trout through the years. The state-record bull trout, caught there in 1947, nonetheless holds the world record for the species at 32 kilos even.
One may additionally wager that the 25-inch Westslope cutthroat that Hatrock’s fish changed within the file e book was a Pend Oreille fish as properly. The fly fisherman who caught that trout, Daniel Whitesitt, defined to Outside Life that he was fishing the bottom stretch of the Clark Fork River, which flows briefly via Idaho earlier than dumping into Pend Oreille’s jap finish.
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Whitesitt caught his state-record cutty there in mid-April, across the similar time cutthroats within the northern Rockies are spawning in tributary streams. And cutties not often develop that enormous in rivers — the most important ones are usually lake dwellers. So, in all probability, that fish had run up the Clark Fork from the depths of Lake Pend Oreille.
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