Official ‘gobsmacked’ over huge brown trout caught ice fishing

An ice fisherman who thought he hooked a monster pickerel instead landed a massive brown trout, pulling it through an 8-inch hole.

An ice fisherman who thought he hooked a monster pickerel instead ended up landing a brown trout the size of which caused “high anxiety” during the fight once the species was identified and amazement once pulled through the 8-inch hole in the ice.

Jamie Pollard was fishing with friends at Stockbridge Bowl lake in Massachusetts on Feb. 6 when he caught a 15-pound, 8-ounce brown trout that measured 32½ inches long and took 25 minutes to land, according to the Boston Globe and Berkshire Eagle.

“I’ve been around doing this for 42 years plus and I’ve never seen anything like it, so it’s pretty amazing,” Pollard told the Globe.

Marion Larson, Massachusetts Fisheries and Wildlife Information and Education chief, told the Globe it is rare to pull a fish that size out of the ice, adding, “I’m as gobsmacked about the size of the fish as probably a bunch of people are.”

Pollard used Arkansas shiners as bait on 8-pound test line fished 10 feet under the ice. It was around 10 a.m. when the tip-up flag sprung upward, indicating a fish strike. Pollard said his heart almost stopped when he first glimpsed the huge brown trout.

“It was a solid 15 minutes before we were able to see the fish swim by the hole and all of us went dead quiet,” he told the Globe. “It was high anxiety, it felt like a lot longer than it was and that’s a long time to be playing a fish, but the first time it went by and when we saw its tail, its tail measured at 7 inches.”

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“We were doing the Keystone Cops,” added Pollard, who was presumably hand-lining the fish in. “Billy was taking the line off and putting it back onto the reel as the fish came in and out of sight.”

The fishermen circled the hole some 30 times before finally angling the head into the hole.

“I was going to send it back; I was not going to keep the fish, but when I pulled it out, got it onto the ice and got a look at it, I did a quick search and thought maybe I had a chance at the state record,” Pollard told the Eagle.

The Massachusetts record for brown trout is 19 pounds 10 ounces and was caught by Dana Deblois from Wachusett Reservoir in 1966. The fish  measured 31 inches.

On the ice, Pollard’s fish weighed 17 pounds, 8 ounces and measured 32 inches, but when it was officially weighed the next day at Onota Boat Livery it went 15½ pounds, though its length remained at 32½ inches.

Afterward, the question arose about the origins of the fish in this 372-acre, artificial impoundment that has been around for more than 140 years.

DFW Western District Supervisor Andrew Madden told the Eagle, “We can’t know for sure, but I would guess that the Stockbridge brown was probably a broodstock from 2016 or 2017. That would likely put the fish around 6-8 years old. Regardless of when it went in, it is an awesome catch and must have been a serious thrill to see it come through the ice.”

No doubt.

Pollard planned to get a “synthetic mount” of the fish and donated filets to his brother.

Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.

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