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When Megan Grey isn’t working the court docket as a degree guard for the Hendrix School girls’s basketball workforce or finding out to finish her biology diploma, she’s chasing outsized trout in Arkansas’ well-known waters. Grey was wade-fishing for trout together with her boyfriend, Oliver Naumann, Sunday within the Little Pink River when she hooked into a possible record-setting brookie.
It was chilly and the pair weren’t having any luck of their first spot, in order that they moved upriver close to a dam and began catching small rainbows. After about half-hour of fishing, Naumann informed Grey he thought he may see an enormous brook trout in shallow, air-clear water.
“I waded over to Oliver, and we may see the fish holding in present down about two or three ft,” Grey tells Outside Life. “I assumed, dang, I higher attempt to catch that one, as a result of it was massive and brook trout there are usually not widespread.”
She modified over to an unweighted orange egg sample fly and tried to tempt the trout.
“I solid and solid and solid, however the fish didn’t act in any respect,” Grey says. “I assumed it may need been asleep. However on about my eighth solid to it, the egg fly simply disappeared, the fish then moved, and took off. I began screaming and yelling for Oliver to get the touchdown web.”
Grey fought the trout near the web in Naumann’s hand. However the fish took off once more. She battled the brookie again towards Naumann a second time and he netted it.
At that second, well-known White River information Duane Hada was strolling previous on his solution to one other space of the Little Pink River. He was accompanied by a retired Arkansas Recreation and Fish Fee worker. They stopped to look at the unfolding motion.
“They had been awestruck on the dimension of the brook trout,” Grey says. “They knew it was uncommon for big brook trout to be in that river, and so they believed it was a state-record fish.”
That a part of the Little Pink River is catch-and-release solely, so Grey couldn’t weigh the trout. Not one of the anglers had a measuring tape, however by holding the fish in opposition to his rod, Hada calculated the brookie Grey had caught was 17.38 inches lengthy. They estimated the fish’s girth at 15.38 inches and that it weighed 5.5 pound kilos.
The present Arkansas brook trout document is 5 kilos, which implies Grey’s trout would have been a brand new state document if it hadn’t been launched.
Grey and Naumann shot images of Grey posing with the trout within the web, which her dad posted to Fb. There’s no query it’s a brook trout, and an enormous one by any normal.
“After I unhooked it and let it go, it simply held stationary within the river present on backside for some time,” Grey says. “I watched it, then appeared away, appeared again, and it was gone.”
Learn Subsequent: Large Colorado Brook Trout Breaks 75-Yr-Outdated State Document
Grey is a veteran fly angler and realized the game from her father, Michael. She caught her first fish on the fly on the age of 5. Since then, she’s caught rainbows as much as 12 kilos and brown trout to fifteen kilos—all from Arkansas rivers with fly fishing deal with.
“I felt good about releasing that massive brook trout,” she says. “I’m glad that another person might catch it, too.
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