Idaho’s Payette Lake Produces Another Catch-and-Release Lake Trout Record

A 44-inch lake trout out of Payette Lake is a trophy fish story, but the better story is what happened before that fish ever hit the net. Big fish do not show up by accident when a fishery has been out of balance.

Kim Anderson caught and released the 44-inch lake trout from Payette Lake near McCall, Idaho, on July 8. The fish broke Idaho’s catch-and-release lake trout record that had stood at 43.25 inches since May 2. It is the third record-setting lake trout from Payette Lake in the past two years and the sixth catch-and-release state record the lake has produced since 2016.

Idaho Fish and Game says the recent run of giant lake trout follows years of work to rebuild Payette Lake’s trophy fishery. Lake trout were introduced there in 1955, and by the 1990s the lake had a reputation for producing fish over 30 pounds. By the early 2000s, smaller lake trout had become so numerous that forage was stretched thin and kokanee declined.

Managers started removing smaller lake trout in 2014 while releasing larger trophy-size fish. The idea was simple fisheries biology: reduce pressure on kokanee, leave more forage for the remaining lake trout and give the fishery room to grow quality instead of just numbers.

That is management hunters and anglers should understand. Sometimes the right answer is harvest. Sometimes it is selective removal. Sometimes it is release. The point is not one slogan. The point is using the right tool for the fishery in front of you. Payette Lake is showing what that can look like when managers stick with it.