I NEVER Should Have Landed This Fish... My Biggest Trout in Years!

What if I told you my biggest brown trout in years never saw the light of day? That there was one fish that rose above the rest, but that some of the footage got deleted and I almost trashed the entire video? Well luckily I found some of the lost footage, enough to at least tell how my biggest fish of 2025 came to be.

It all started after a bad day of fishing believe it or not. But not because of any reason other than I’m a sub par angler when it comes to indicator nymphing and light tippet. At least I think so, because my ratio of hooking big fish to landing them isn’t the best. So I had this brilliant idea that I was going to try and get some redemption. Which is how I ended up on the river looking for some fish.

Now I had fished this area before, but not enough to really know what I was doing. I mean I know there are some big fish here, but often times finding them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Luckily I was at least catching some fish though.

I continued fishing there for a little while, mostly because there are other people around me and I didn’t want to disturb them, but I didn’t like that spot. It just wasn’t deep enough, So I started moving around looking for a deeper cut, because I figured if I could find some deeper water I’d find some larger fish. After a short time I found a pretty cool cut that seemed to be holding some fish. So, rather than continuing to move around I decided to stay put for a while.

So here’s the deal, as you may have realized this area gets a ton of pressure and the fish were just NOT wanting anything to do with me. And you might be like “Jon how did you know there were fish there” Well let’s just say it was pretty obvious.
So after a while I decided to downsize tippet against my better judgment. I don’t really like the idea of throwing less than 5x for big trout but I dropped to 6x. I also changed to just one singular fly below my indicator, in this case it was a small mop fly, to keep the drift simple and in one singular lane. I have no idea if this mattered, or if the fish just randomly decided to bite, but it got real very quickly.

So the only footage from the day that has still gone unfound, and I’m pretty sure I must have accidentally deleted it, was the actual footage me holding this beautiful fish up. But luckily I have some photos to show you so you get to admire how cool this fish was. Those sparsely spotted fish are always special. And to land her on 6 x tipper was impressive to say the least. Luckily for the release I got an underwater video so you can see that she’s still healthy and kicking, hopefully to be caught by someone else one day. I fished throughout the rest of the day but didn’t come up with anything else, at least nothing anywhere near that size. So that’s how the story of my biggest brown trout in years ends. Thanks for watching!

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