A 75-year-old fishing record, the oldest in Colorado, was broken when Tim Daniel of Granby landed a 7.84-pound brook trout at Monarch Lake, a fishery officials suspected was home to the state record.
“When I headed out to fish that day with my friend Karen and four-legged friend Moose, I had no intention of breaking a record,” Daniel told Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “I wasn’t sure what I had hooked, but I knew it was big.”
The brook trout measured 23¼ inches in length, had a 15-inch girth, and surpassed the previous record by a slim margin. The old mark was 7.63 pounds caught by George Knorr in Upper Cataract Lake in 1947.
Asked by the CPW where and what he used to catch the fish, Daniels said “in the water and with a hook.”
Though we do know it was caught at Monarch Lake, Daniels didn’t reveal to CPW what he used to catch the trophy trout, remaining coy about that and other details.
CPW Aquatic Biologist Jon Ewert inspected the fish the day it was caught on May 23. The CPW announced the approval of the record on Friday.
Ewert wasn’t too surprised the record came from Monarch Lake, saying, “We always suspected that Monarch Lake had the potential to produce a state-record brook trout. This is a real testament to the quality of our angling opportunities in Grand County.
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“It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving angler than Tim. He’s just one of those guys that is always out there on the water and as a result, has an intimate knowledge of the subtle details necessary to be so successful.”
But just don’t ask him to reveal them.
Incidentally, the oldest-standing fishing record in Colorado is now a 4.44-pound white bass caught by Pedro Martinez from Blue Lake in 1963.
Photo courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife.