An Idaho man turned heads earlier this month when he caught an eleven-plus pound coho salmon within the Clearwater River close to Lewiston. Matt Hosking had the salmon weighed on a licensed scale at an area grocery again in mid-October, and on Tuesday, October 24, the Idaho Division of Fish and Sport (IDFG) declared it a brand new state file for the species.
“All of my years fishing, I get to lastly get my title within the state file books,” Hosking wrote in an October 13 Fb publish in regards to the record-setting catch. “Caught a coho salmon right this moment weighing 11.775lbs and 32 3/4” lengthy.”
Hosking caught the file coho whereas focusing on Clearwater steelhead, he tells Discipline & Stream. “We have been pulling Magazine Lips by an enormous gap close to the paper mill,” he remembers. “When the rod buried, I believed I had a steelhead on the road, however the fish by no means jumped like steelhead usually do.”
After he boated the salmon, Hosking measured it and began looking by state data on his telephone. “I checked out my buddy and stated, ‘We gotta go,’” he says. “I’m pondering: I gotta get this factor measured. That is actually near the state file.”
The fish had been on ice for about two hours by the point Hosking arrived on the IDFG workplace in Lewiston. As soon as measured and weighed, it edged out the earlier state file by lower than a half ounce.
In line with an IDFG press launch, Hosking’s catch got here throughout the third consecutive 12 months of strong coho runs in Idaho, with over 15,000 adults passing over Decrease Granite Dam. “There are larger Coho on the market, however not many,” stated Clearwater Area Fishery Supervisor Joe DuPont. “Based mostly on the two,400 Coho we’ve trapped at Decrease Granite Dam this 12 months, solely 2 would surpass the scale of this fish.”
The Decrease Granite Dam is considered one of a number of dams on the Decrease Snake River that wild salmon from the Pacific Ocean should negotiate so as to attain natal spawning grounds in Idaho’s Clearwater River basin. These dams have been a subject of controversy lately as fisheries conservationists, supported by Trout Limitless and different teams, vie to get them eliminated. Supporters of dam removing say {that a} free-flowing Decrease Snake is the important thing to recovering Idaho’s federally endangered salmon and steelhead populations.
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“Once we’re out pulling Magazine Lips for steelhead, we most likely hook two to a few coho a season,” Hosking says. “I do know a number of guides round right here that catch greater than that. We additionally goal them completely with spinners earlier within the fall. By the point they get to the opening the place I caught his one, they’ve most likely traveled about 465 miles from the ocean.”
