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ORANGEVILLE, Emery County — A Pleasant Grove man caught a once-in-a-lifetime fish that was named the new catch-and-release record on Jan. 24.
Buckley Jolley caught the splake, a hybrid of a lake and brook trout, while he was fishing at Joes Valley Reservoir in November 2017, according to an emailed statement from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. He was fishing from the shore when he said he felt a lot of pulling on his 7-pound fly line. He said he landed the fish in 15 minutes, but it “felt more like 30 minutes.”
“He felt heavy,” Jolley said in the press release. “I had to play the fish just right and let him run if he needed to run. When I pulled him out, I was just amazed at how big he was. It was pretty epic.”
Jolley said he caught the record fish in 15-20 feet of water using a white streamer fly.
Wildlife officials determined the 30.5-inch fish was a new catch-and-release state record for splake. The weight is not taken for a catch-and-release fish.
“The idea is to quickly measure the fish, take one or two photos and then get the fish back in the water as quickly as possible,” DWR spokesman Mark Hadley told KSL.com. “Releasing a fish as quick as possible is the best thing for the fish!”
The previous record for splake was a 29-inch fish caught and released at Joes Reservoir in 2015.
Joes Valley is also home to tiger muskie as well as cutthroat, rainbow, brook and tiger trout and is well-known for producing large fish. Biologists predict that the reservoir will produce a high number of trophy-caliber splake in 2018 and 2019, after data trends from the annual fall gill net surveys showed that splake between 20-24 inches long have increased from 4 percent in 2013 to 34 percent in 2017, DWR officials said.
“We’re right at that nice level where the trout are doing exceptional,” Calvin Black, the DWR’s assistant aquatics program manager in southeastern Utah said in the emailed statement. “Our average splake there is 18 inches. It seems to be a good balance right now. A percentage of those fish are going to bump up into the 24-inch-plus trophy range.”
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