When Owen Schaad pulled in the new state record tiger trout from Viva Naughton Reservoir near Kemmerer, it was quite the surprise. He fished the water often but didn’t usually catch much.

“I was fishing for maybe about four hours,” said Schaad. “Out of nowhere I hook onto this big ol’ fish and I think it’s a brown trout. It took maybe 20 minutes to get it where I could see it. When I got it up to the bank and in the net and saw what it was, I was all excited, jumping up and down.”

Schaad brought the fish home and called the local game warden before taking it to a grocery store — one of two places nearby with a certified scale. The official scale weight was 11.93 pounds. The length was 31 inches with a girth of 16.5 inches.

Schaad broke the state record that had been in place for 11 years, previously set in May 2012. In fact, he’s one of the only people to break a trout state record in a while. The previous tiger trout record was set in 2012 and splake in 2011; the only trout state records to have been broken in the 21st century, according to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

These two hybrid species are relatively new in Wyoming. Yet, both species can be caught in the Big Horn Basin and, if things go well, there could possibly be a future state record fish in a pond within a short drive of Powell.

The tiger trout is a cross between a female brown trout (Salmo trutta) and a male brook trout.

In recent years, Game and Fish has been stocking thousands of tiger trout in Lower Sunshine Reservoir beginning in 2015. It has been the most successful stocking among nearly a dozen other waters in the Big Horn Basin, said Mark Smith, assistant fisheries management coordinator, who works out of the Cody Region office.

“Approximately 10 waters have been stocked with tiger trout in the Basin although several waters have proven to not yield acceptable survival and/or growth and stocking has stopped,” he said Thursday in an email interview with the Tribune.

Anglers may still catch tiger trout in these waters as the few survivors hold on, but the species is sterile and will eventually die off in the waters without future stocking. Waters that may still hold the species but won’t be stocked with the species in the future include Solar Lake (Beartooth), West Tensleep Lake, Cliff Lake (Bighorns), Beck Lake and Granite Lake (Bighorns).

Several waters have been stocked within the last three years with tiger trout and they are just now getting to an age/size for fisheries biologists to begin to determine how well they will perform, Smith said. These include Hogan Reservoir, South Fork Dike Pond and Diamond Creek Dike Pond. They were all first stocked in 2021.

There are two more area waters that will be stocked soon, including Sawtooth Lake (Beartooth) with plans to begin stocking next year, and Gardner Lake (Beartooth) which should be stocked in 2025.

“Lower Sunshine Reservoir and East Newton Lake are the top performers of tiger trout in the Big Horn Basin. Both of these waters have produced fish over 20 inches in length and anglers can expect to encounter good numbers,” Smith said.

The primary benefit, Smith said, is that anglers like them. They are aggressive feeders like their brook trout parent and can grow to large sizes like their brown trout parent.

“It doesn't hurt that they look really cool!” he said.

They are also useful to managers in that they are sterile so they can tightly control their numbers to maximize results. 

“Additionally they can be used to thin other small bodied fish as they grow to be voracious predators,” he said.

To date the largest tiger trout observed in our region has been far smaller than the recent record fish caught in Viva Naughton Reservoir, Smith said. “That isn’t to say it isn’t possible for a fish from Lower Sunshine to be of similar size or that we aren’t growing one that will break the record in the future.”

Tiger trout can grow fast given the right food sources. The food source they really need to achieve trophy sizes includes a buffet of small fish.

“We hope the abundant sucker population in Lower Sunshine Reservoir may provide the opportunity for a few tiger trout to get very large,” he said.

“Fish need remarkable conditions to grow into record proportions. As people catch those fish it becomes less likely another fish with those conditions will be caught again any time soon,” Smith said. “Popular sport fish records tend to become stagnant over time due to the unusual environmental conditions that are required to produce exceptional sized fish.”

The wavy tiger-like markings on the sides of this hybrid give it a unique beauty, according to Trout Unlimited. It does not substantially resemble either of the parent species or any other trout species. The overall color of the tiger trout is brownish on the back, lightening on the sides and belly to a golden yellow with a brown or orange wash. The back and sides both above and below the lateral line display large prominent sunshine yellow vermiculations, or worm-like markings, that are much more vivid and extensive than those of the brook trout.

Earlier this year the state records were broken for both longnose and white sucker — one Riverton angler caught both along the same stretch of the Wind River. Powell resident Clint Franklin appears to be the most recent state record holder from Park County, catching a 10-pound, 4.2-ounce shovelnose sturgeon that was 44 inches long. He caught the beast in Bighorn Lake in 2014. It was the only state record caught in the Big Horn Basin, according to Game and Fish records.