Joe Bouta of Benson, Minnesota was fishing with the Lake Superior Jigging Information Service on Could 9 when he hooked a huge lake trout that edged out the catch-and-release report for the state of Minnesota. Bouta’s information, Ethan Waytashek, knew it was a brand new state report nearly instantly as a result of he’d simply helped one other consumer internet the standing report the earlier month.
Bouta was fishing in deep, white-capped waters, braving 15 to twenty mile-per-hour wind gusts, when the fish hit. Waytashek had noticed it with a 2D fish finder simply moments earlier than.
In response to Bouta’s son Andrew, who was on board when he caught record-breaking trout, it took a full quarter-hour for his dad to land it. It was Bouta’s second-ever lake trout. He caught his first earlier within the journey, that very same day.
“We had been purported to fish the Michigan facet of the lake that morning, however the wind was simply too dangerous, so Ethan got here up with an alternate recreation plan,” Andrew tells Subject & Stream. “We had been vertical jigging in 100 toes of water, and it simply slammed into his tube jig. He saved the strain on it the entire time till Ethan lastly obtained it within the internet.”
After netting the fish, Waytashek measured it at 44.5 inches. It bested the earlier report, a 44-incher caught by Matthew Hammer again in April, by a half inch.
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Like Bouta, Hammer had been jigging with Waytashek in Lake Superior when he caught his report trout. Introduced by the Minnesota DNR on Could 18, Hammer’s fish unseated a report laker that one other one in all Waytashek’s shoppers caught in March 2025, which measured 43.25-inches. Amazingly, one other consumer of Waytasheks held the state report for lake trout earlier than that.
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