BY DAVE HURLEY
WON Staff Writer
SHAVER LAKE VILLAGE – One never knows what will happen when you put a line in the water, but Steve Jones of Clovis, was the beneficiary of an incredible surprise when he obliterated the Shaver Lake brown trout record with a ‘fish of a lifetime’ at 37.5 inches and 24.48 pounds.
Shaver is not generally known as a brown trout designation as upstream Huntington is the wintertime location for the secret society of dedicated anglers known as ‘Brown Baggers,’ but it seems that a trophy brown is landed on an annual basis at Shaver. Within the past three weeks, brown trout at 9 and 14 pounds came out of Shaver, only to a lapped by Jone’s massive fish.
Jones, 72, has been fishing Shaver since he was a young boy with his father and his father’s friends, and although he has landed several of the trophy rainbow trout released by the Shaver Lake Trophy Trout Project, he was astounded by what turned out to be a huge brown. Fishing solo for kokanee on a shakedown trip on his boat, Jones was trolling a pink hoochie behind a dodger on the downrigger at 20 feet in 90 feet of water. He had landed four kokanee ranging from 12 to 14 inches and trying to fill out his limit when the big fish hit. Jones said, “At first, I thought I was looked on the bottom, but since I was in deep water and my downrigger was only down 15 to 20 feet, I could imagine that I was grounded. The fish took off, and I had a hard time controlling both the boat and the line to stay up with the fish. I felt the head shaking, and I thought it must have been a trophy trout in the 10- to 12-pound range. Since I was targeting kokanee with an 8-pound leader on 6-pound main line on a light kokanee rod, I knew I was in for a fight. When the trout first surfaced a long way from the boat, I was in complete disbelief, and I became very nervous that I would lose this fish. Finally, after about 25 minutes and working the boat toward the fish while catching up as much as I could, the fish came to side of boat, but my net was too small. I tried to bring it in by the gills, but I got nicked by a sharp tooth, and the trout took off again. The next time it came in, it was spent, and I hoisted it into the boat, couldn’t believe it, and placed it on ice to go get it weighed. I reeled in my second rod which had a small kokanee on it for limits and went to Shaver Lake Sports for a weight.”
Jones has already made plans for a reproduction of the ‘fish of a lifetime,’ and this brown surpassed the former lake record by nearly 5 pounds. Tim Young, one of the region’s brown trout experts, considered a 20-pound brown landed by Terry Beam as the former lake record while Young previously landed a brown at 19.25 pounds and 35.5 inches at Shaver. Young added, “It’s quite possible that this huge brown survived the draining of the lake several years ago, but some of these smaller browns are most likely from the plants within the past 10 years. Shaver has an abundant supply of small kokanee and smallmouth bass, just what is needed to develop a trophy brown trout population.”
