Greg Hauge, a Bismarck, North Dakota, angler, caught the new Montana state record chinook salmon at Fort Peck Reservoir on Sunday. The fish tipped the scales at 32.05 pounds, was 38 1/8 inches long and 26.5 inches around.
It took 29 years to top the Montana state record for an angler-caught chinook salmon at Fort Peck Reservoir.
On Sunday, Bismarck, North Dakota, fisherman Greg Hauge reeled in a 32.05-pounder. The sizable salmon measured 38 1/8 inches long and was a football-ish 26.5 inches in girth.
The old record, set in October 1991, was a 38-inch chinook that weighed 31.13 pounds. Berkshire, New York, angler Carl Niles reeled in that fat fish. According to a 1992 Montana Standard column, the Montana record for chinook salmon was broken four times in 1990 before Niles got a firm hold on the record.
Steve Dalbey, fisheries manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Glasgow, certified the fish and the scale on Monday.
“It looks like we have a new state record,” Dalbey said.
“It was a good fish. Super thick. Just beautiful,” he added.
Here’s the catch: Dalbey said the record-breaking fish could be topped as the season wears on.
“There’s a chance this may be a short-lived record,” he said.
Nonnatives
Chinook salmon are hatchery raised and planted in Fort Peck Reservoir. The key to the salmon’s growth is a plentiful supply of the fish they eat — cisco.
Cisco populations seem to do best when there is an early ice over of Fort Peck Reservoir, Dalbey explained. Cisco are fall, open-water spawners. When the ice comes early it reduces wave action on the fishes’ eggs, meaning more hatch.
The cisco have also done well thanks to plenty of water in Fort Peck. High water floods vegetation along the shoreline. This creates habitat and food for smaller lake inhabitants, like zooplankton, that the cisco eat.
“It’s the product of really good forage production with the cisco and really good water levels at Fort Peck,” Dalbey said. “That whole fishery is very dependent on cisco and that good production.”
Landlocked
The inland king salmon fishery is an oddity. Most salmon are born in freshwater streams and migrate downstream to grow up in ocean saltwater. The parents die after spawning.
In the 1980s FWP decided to plant the Pacific salmon species in Fort Peck. The planted fish return to the area where they were stocked in the fall — after 2 to 4 years — thinking they will spawn. Instead, FWP crews capture the fish and strip them of eggs and sperm to foster the next population of hatchery chinook for Fort Peck.
The salmon fishery has drawn anglers from across the United States, as has prime smallmouth bass, walleye, lake trout and northern pike fishing.
“It’s starting to bring in expertise from the Great Lakes,” Dalbey said, which also has a salmon fishery.
As evidence of the fishery's drawing power, campgrounds around Fort Peck have been full all summer.
“On the upper end I’ve never seen it so busy,” Dalbey said.
Although big salmon are a draw, Dalbey said Fort Peck’s large lake trout have also become an angler attractant.
“I’m hearing of guys really promoting this fishery” on social media, he added.
One example is North Dakota’s Jason Mitchell Outdoors. In a February 2013 video, Mitchell boasts about an October lake trout fishing trip to Fort Peck using light tackle in shallow water. “Huge fish and no fishermen,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for anything more if you like to fish.”
After reeling in his first lake trout, Mitchell noted, “Everything grows to Jurassic proportions on Fort Peck. You name it and it gets big on this water.”
That was demonstrated by Mike Dominick's 2017 catch of a new state record smallmouth bass — a 7.5-pounder caught and released at Fort Peck Reservoir.
Chinook salmon fishing on Fort Peck picks up in the late summer as the fish congregate near the east end of the reservoir where they were planted.
“It will start to build now for the next few weeks,” Dalbey said.
In comparison to previous years, he said the catch rates for salmon so far has been down but the fish seem to be larger.
Anglers use downriggers to troll about 50 to 70 feet deep pulling flashers with a squid or fly as bait.
“It’s an incredible fishery right now,” Dalbey said.
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August 18, 2020 at 07:00AM
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Big fish story: North Dakotan lands Montana record chinook salmon at Fort Peck Reservoir - Billings Gazette
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