Dylan Smith, an angler from Idaho Falls, has reclaimed his place in the Idaho record books with a 40-plus-inch lake trout. The monster laker came from Payette Lake, the same body of water where he broke the state catch-and-release laker record in 2018. This is also where Smith’s record was replaced in 2025 by Aaron Goetsche, a fisherman from Utah.
According to it, Smith was fishing on the Payette on May 2 when he caught the trout. Announcement Tuesday from the Idaho Fish and Game Department. Smith released the fish, so it was never weighed. But he measured the laker at 43.25 inches long, beating Goetsche’s catch-and-release record by only 1.25 inches.
“The former lake trout record holder is back!”. Smith wrote a facebook post On 9 June, when the IDFG made the record official. “43.25” is the new length to beat!”
Smith’s post also included a released video that shows the monster laker swimming fast. The fish clearly has a PIT tag on it, meaning it was caught and released at some point by a state fisheries biologist.
The tagging is part of IDFG’s management program on the Payette, which revolves around the trophy-sized lake trout that live in the larger water body near McCall. The agency says the Payette is “arguably one of the premier lake trout fisheries in the state of Idaho,” and over the last 10 or so years, they have worked to maintain that reputation.
In the early 2000s, biologists noticed that the lake trout there were becoming thinner. He saw this as a decline in the lake’s kokanee population as well as an increase in smaller-sized lakers.
Therefore, in 2018, IDFG began a restoration project on Payette that included stocking more kokanee and culling smaller lake trout (less than 27 inches) from the population. IDFG says more than 3,000 of those smaller lakers have since been removed, causing the remaining fish to grow faster and fatter.
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The back-to-back Laker records set over the last 12 months are a testament to this management strategy. Although Smith’s 43.25-inch fish was never placed on a scale, according to rough length-to-weight conversion charts, it weighed approximately 30 to 35 pounds. But IDFG believes There are even bigger lakers swimming in Payette. In 2023, biologists there caught and released a lake trout that weighed 54 pounds.
