It was 6 a.m. on June 6, and veteran angler Shelby Holder was prowling the edges of the Hams Fork River in Wyoming. He was looking for rainbow trout, which he says were spawning at the time, but later that afternoon he spotted a giant fish in shallow water. He figured it was a tiger trout, which is a sterile hybrid cross between a brown trout and a brookie.
“I think tiger trout come into the feeder streams looking to feed on eggs and fry from spawning rainbows,” Holder tells Outdoor Life. “I saw some 20-inch rainbows in the shallows, and there was a huge fish that was chasing around them – a real bully trout.
“I figured it was a large tiger trout. So, I started casting some big, brown ‘Wooly Bugger’ bead-head flies to it. The fish refused the big flies. Then I put on a smaller brown ‘Wooly Bugger’ with a flashy body and marabou feather tail I hand-made.”
Holder said the fish refused the smaller fly on his first cast. But on his second cast with the 2.5-inch Wooly Bugger, the fish slammed it hard and a half-hour fight began. The fish went nuts with powerful runs and dives, but it never jumped.
Holder was using a diminutive 1-weight fly rod because he’d broken all his other fly rods earlier this year. With the small rod Holder was a bit under gunned for such a big trout in a narrow trout stream. So, he battled the trout very carefully.
“I had an 8-pound test leader tippet, but the fish never tried to wrap my line around any river obstructions,” says the 50-year-old railroad employee and fly-fishing guide. “He just powered down, sometimes rubbing my fly on the bottom.
“I had all afternoon, so I just played the fish with care for 30 minutes. I had a net, but only his head would fit in it. So I eased the fish close, knelt down, and got it on shore. I knew it was a big tiger trout, but I didn’t think it could be a state-record fish.”
But it was.
Holder took his big tiger trout into a nearby town and called a friend. They then took the fish to a grocery store to have it measured and weighed on certified scales.
An official from the Green River headquarters of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department arrived to witness the fish being weighed and measured. Holder’s tiger trout had a 31.2-inch length, 19-inch girth, and weighed 14 pounds, 15.2 ounces. It was certified, and has become the new state record.
Holder’s fish smashed the previous Wyoming tiger trout record of 12.77 pounds. That fish was caught last year from Viva Naughton Reservoir by Jaxon Krall of Kemmerer.
In 2023, Cheyenne’s Owen Schaad caught the then state tiger record weighing 11.92 pounds, also at Viva Naughton Reservoir.
Holder is going to have a diorama-type 3D replica mount made of his new state record fish.
“Kelsey Reese at Piney Creek Taxidermy in Sheridan is a taxidermy artist who does great work,” says Holder. “She’s going to do my mount in a natural type underwater setting. My 1-weight fly rod will be part of that mount, because I’m retiring it after catching a state record tiger trout with it.”