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CARBON COUNTY — James Henrie and his friend got a boat out on Scofield Reservoir early Saturday morning, just before the sun rose over the mountain.
Henrie caught several large fish and had his reel freeze up from the cold before he got the big winner — a 24.5-inch long, 15-inch wide cutthroat trout whose belly was bulging with a meal of four 6.5-inch long rainbow trouts inside.
"I was surprised it was still hungry enough to eat the lure I was catching it on," said Henrie, a software engineer living in Lehi.
He said he didn't realize how big the trout was when it first caught onto his rapala lure, which looks like a fish.
"It took a really long time to reel it in," he said. “I didn’t realize how big it was, but my friend realized right away how big it was and he was yelling and screaming and thought it was really cool.”
Henrie said it was the biggest fish he's ever caught, but that the biggest fish of the day may have actually gotten away — another fish was so strong it broke the line before they could reel it in.
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“It was so big I was curious what was inside,” Henrie said. “The four rainbow trout (inside), they were all the same size... They looked like he had only eaten them maybe a day before, or not that long before. They were a little bit digested, but not totally.”
When fish get really big, they tend to eat other fish, he said. They noticed a lot of small fish near the dock and suspected their cutthroat trout had been snacking on rainbow trout newly planted in the reservoir.
In total they caught and released 31 fish that day, only keeping the prize "monster" fish.
“That was the best fishing day I’ve ever had in my whole life,” Henrie said. “My friend agreed, too. It was the best fishing day he’d had in his whole life and he goes fishing probably two or three times a week.”
Henrie started fishing at a young age when his father taught him. He wasn't able to go for a number of years when he was living in Chicago, so he is happy to have returned to Utah where he could resume his hobby of fishing for trout.
“It’s been real exciting to be able to go fishing again,” he said. “I’m real excited to be back in Utah, and especially to be able to catch such a big fish.”
Even though it's cold, the fish are still biting, Henrie said.
