A young angler became a state-record holder when he reeled in a large trout from a southwestern Wyoming reservoir, officials said.
Jaxon Krall, 13, set the record in late July when he caught a 12.77-pound tiger trout from Viva Naughton Reservoir outside Kemmerer, the Wyoming Game & Fish Department said in a news release.
Krall’s catch “shattered” the previous record of 11.93 pounds, officials said. The previous record trout came from the same reservoir in 2023.
Krall caught the 31.25-inch fish from shore on a Thomas Buoyant lure, officials said. The fish was 16.75 inches around and almost appears bigger than Krall in a photo he took with the fish.
“Geeze,” the “soft-spoken” teenager said when he hooked and landed the fish. “I was fishing for anything that would bite, but I knew when I hooked it that it was big.”
It’s the first tiger trout he’s caught from the reservoir, officials said. He and his family had the fish weighed properly in Kemmerer to see if it would break the record.
Krall was “excited and nervous” while they waited to find out. “And I was really happy and excited when it was,” he said.
Krall believes there are tiger trout in the reservoir that are even bigger than his record-setting fish, and he’s eager to try to catch them, officials said. But next time he says he’ll release them.
The fish are a hybrid of a brook trout and brown trout and can’t breed, officials said. The department stocks them at the reservoir and has each year since 2014 to curb the large population of Utah chub in the reservoir and “provide diversity to the fishery” where rainbow trout is the primary species.
Tiger trout are mostly feeding on Utah chub, according to Robb Keith, Game and Fish fisheries supervisor in the Green River Region.
“We stock small numbers of tiger trout to provide an opportunity for anglers to catch an exceptional fish from time to time,” he said in the release.
Because the fish are aggressive predators and have plenty of food, Keith expects more “exceptional fish” to thrive in the reservoir — and anglers to try catching them, he said.
“We see them predominantly close to shore down to 25 feet of water,” Keith said. “They are found close to structures. They are eating shiners and Utah chubs, so anglers should choose lures, flies and baits that resemble these forage fish.”
Kemmerer is about a 170-mile drive south from Jackson.
