Whopper splake

[The Bait Shop Guy]

Last night, I decided to try my hand at salmon trolling for the first time this year. Took my buddy Bruce along. We fished from 6 to 9:45, south of Escanaba. We hardly marked anything, and never had a bump. We decided to pull lines at 9:45. We were in the process of bringing in the second dipsey, when one of the leadcores gets hit. It was on my side, so I reeled it in. It didn't fight like a salmon, and when we saw it wallowing behind the boat on the surface, we could see it was a dark greenish/brown. The only thing I could think of was it's a big old channel cat. After it made a couple runs behind the boat, and I got it closer, we realized it was actually a pretty good sized splake! After Bruce netted it and plopped it on the deck, our eyes about popped out of our heads! I've never seen a bigger splake! After we calmed down a bit, and put her on the measuring board, she came in at 30 inches. I've caught one that was longer (32 inches,) but that fish was no where near as fat as this one.

Brought her home and showed my folks and Diane before weighing it. I told her that if it weighed more than 13 pounds, I'd get it mounted. Less than that, and I'd probably cut her up. Brought it over to Elmer's to have it weighed on their meat scale, and it went 12.89 pounds. Bummer, I wanted her to be a true "teener." Then the guy running the scale notices her head was resting off the scale, on a piece of metal. When we got her all the way on the scale, she went 13.01 pounds! Looks like she's going on the wall!

For what it's worth, I caught it on a 7 color leadcore pulling a magnum Warrior spoon (Sister Sledge,) in about 65 FOW, East of Portage Point.

[YooperTroll]

Congrats! That is a beauty!

[acesario]

I had no idea they got that big.. nice fish!

[YooperTroll]

That'll be a gorgeous mount, too. Pretty fish.

[YooperTroll]

Chris, what's that mark on the side of the fish...lamprey scar?

[captjimtc]

Nice fish Chris! How do you tell it's a splake?? Looks like a nice laker to me.. I probably would have thrown that back thinking it was an out of slot lake trout where I fish..I always thought splake had some orange dots and/or orange fins like a brook trout...

[formereskymo]

Easiest way I always look at is the tail, if straight Brookie, deep fork laker, in between Splake. Cant go by coloring since it varies so much.

My friend caught a big brookie 10 years ago (5lbs) and the DNR determined it was acturally a Brookie by cutting into and looking at something in digestive tract (not good for catch and release).

[FishinMachine]

North Country Legends out in gstone does awesome work on his fish if you havent brought it anywear yet

[The Bait Shop Guy]

Thanks for the comments, guys

Chris, what's that mark on the side of the fish...lamprey scar?

It didn't really look like a lamprey mark, just some sort of healed over, old wound. I should have paid more attention when posing with her - other side is fine.

How do you tell it's a splake??...I always thought splake had some orange dots and/or orange fins like a brook trout...

#1 It came out of Bay de Noc. I'm always going to assume it's a splake, first.

#2 The squared off tail. Lakers are much more deeply forked.

#3 The "wormy" marks on the back, and smaller spots on the sides. Over the years, we've only pulled a couple lakers out of the bay, and we were able to identify them before they were even in the net. The spots were much larger and so much more "pronounced" than on a splake. I'm guessing this fish is a female. All the bigger males I've seen outside of the fall spawning season kept the gnarly hooked jaws, and vivid fin colors. This fish does have some faint, orange spots on her sides, but they are hard to see in the pictures.

Thanks for the taxidermist recommendation, but I'll be bringing her to Mike Sullivan with Bay de Noc Taxidermy. He can be a hard guy to get a hold of, but he does a great job on splake.

[captjimtc]

Thanks for the clarification Chris!!

[johnkregs]

we caught this one two june's ago in the same spot just short of the state record

nice the moonshine lure in it's mouth...

[johnkregs]

here's another try at a smaller picture....