Recently on Facebook, there were pictures and an article about a giant brook trout that was caught in the Adirondacks on July 5. It was 22 inches long and beat the previous six-pound record by three ounces.
Now, before you ask, where it was caught, let me tell you. You’re wasting your breath. Guys who fish for record book trout will never reveal the name of the pond they were fishing. Look at it this way. If they told you where it was caught, you would tell a friend who would tell his friends and the next time the fisherman went back to that particular pond, there would be two dozen others fishing that water.
When I moved to the Adirondacks back in 1969, I asked an old timer and guide who lived across the road from me where I could catch big brookies.
“Oh, there’s plenty of places to go if you don’t mind hiking a few miles in, but right out there about three miles is a good place to start,” he said, as he raised his hand and pointed. The trouble was, he cut his index finger halfway through on a chain saw, and it pointed at a 45 degree angle from the second joint, So was he pointing straight with his hand or off to the left with that crooked finger. Well, it took me about three years to find that particular pond, and by then it was pretty well fished out.
So, Benjamin Ferguson and his buddy will never tell anyone where they were fishing. Heck, there are easily a couple thousand back-country ponds in the Adirondacks. Sixteen of them are named Mud Pond or Mud Lake.
They fish where no man in his right mind will go. Using 20-pound Hornbeck carbon fiber one-man canoes, they hike in eight to 10 miles. Sometimes they fish all day and never get a bite. That happened the day Ben caught the record fish. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that the monster hit his bait. Being too late to hike out to have the fish weighed on a certified scale, they filled the canoe with water and floated it out in the lake so nothing would eat the fish.
Now, most guys who catch big brook trout use a lure that was made right here in Gilbertsville by Art Freer. He was the postmaster there for many years. The lure was called the Lake Clear Wobbler. It is a shiny silver spoon, pointed on each end, that attracts the fish to a nightcrawler on a hook that is trailed a foot or so behind the lure. It is the go-to lure for most brook trout fishermen. It’s trolled slowly behind their canoes. I caught most of my brook trout over the years on that same lure while slowly trolling in the cold, clear mountain water.
The previous record brook trout was supposedly caught in Silver Lake, north of Benson along the Northville–Placid Trail about 12 years ago. I doubt it though. Fishermen lie. I fished that pond years ago and never caught a thing.
There was a time when you couldn’t find a brook trout. Acid rain killed the lakes and most of the fish. The coal-powered power plants of the midwest polluted much of the water, but ways of producing electricity have changed. Today the lakes and ponds are alive with fish. But as you can see, it takes a bit of effort to find them.