While fishing with his son Hunter on Blue Mesa Reservoir in Colorado on May 5, 2023, Black Rifle Coffee Pro Scott Enloe caught the fish of a lifetime, in more ways than one when he and his son boated a lake trout they weighed at 73.29 pounds on their certified scale. That not only blows the Colorado state record out of the water, but it’s also heavier than than the world record lake trout of 72 pounds caught in 1995 on Great Bear Lake in Canada.
Enloe was a professional bass angler, and was a member of the US Men’s Fly Fishing Team as well as being an avid hunter and outdoorsman. He and his son have spent countless hours learning to catch trophy lake trout like this one. He uses heavy baitcasting gear and Basstrix swimbaits to catch these Lakers. Biologists believe this fish could have been one of the original stocked lakers in Blue Mesa. If that’s true, this fish is more than 57 years old as those original stockings happened in 1966. And we say “is” because the fish is still alive.
After catching the monster, shooting some photos, videoing the measurements for weight, length and girth which ran 47 inches long and 37 inches in girth, the Enloes revived and released the world class lake trout back into the water.
This could ultimately be what keeps them from officially getting their names in the IGFA record books as historically the IGFA has been real sticklers about weighing your fish on certified scales “on land.” Meaning weights recorded in boat don’t count. We saw this happen years ago with the spotted bass record catch.
Enloe said him and his son knowing they caught and released the world record was recognition enough. Everyone knows it’s the record, even if they don’t put it in the book.
See The Enloe’s Instagram post about the catch complete with videos of the measurements and the release.
See more about this amazing catch on freerangeamerican.us.
