Becket almost has record-setting day

[Spiel]

Becket almost has record-setting day

 

 

Aug. 15, 2009

Will Elliott / buffalonews.com

 

 

Anthony Becket shows his hefty lunker he caught in Lake Erie, west of Dunkirk Harbor.

 

 

Records are made to be almost broken.

 

Anthony "Tony" Becket lives in Portland, Ore., but spends his summers at Chautauqua Institute, enjoying the various activities provided there.

 

One day each season he books a fishing charter. This year, the walleye run on Lake Erie had been slow, but charter captain Paul Dreher (cq) of Small Fortune Charters headed for deeper waters Aug. 6 with hopes of hooking into trout as well as walleye some 12 miles northwest of Dunkirk Harbor.

 

Dreher's plans worked very well. Becket fished with his father-in-law, Norman Pedersen of Florida, his son Pete Pedersen of Wellesley, Mass, and his son Bill Pedersen, 18.

 

The foursome got just one walleye, but the outing resulted in a total of 10 lunker lake trout, one that nearly broke the New York State record for that species.

 

Dreher set lines close to bottom at depths to 130 feet.

 

"The Dream Weaver [spoon] with a "gator' [black, green, and green glow] got the big one," he said of the biggest trout.

 

Becket noted all four anglers enjoyed catching and releasing big lakers. "Most of them were around 20 pounds, except for my big one," he boasted of his fish that looked as though it would weigh in the high 40-pound range.

 

Bill Culligan, DEC Great Lakes Supervisor from the Lake Erie Unit at Dunkirk met Becket and Dreher at Bart's Cove in Dunkirk Harbor; Culligan confirmed the fish as a true lake trout species.

 

"Our next problem was to find a certified scale," Dreher said since most store scales stop at 30 pounds.

 

"By the time we had it officially weighed at a store in Sherman, it came to 40.25 pounds," Becket said of the weigh-in posted at 1:30 p.m.

 

The weight total missed the state record laker that Jesse Wykstra caught out of Dunkirk Harbor on Aug. 9, 2003. That fish weighed 41.5 pounds.

 

"Before today, the biggest trout I'd ever caught was 15 inches long," Becket said as his large laker was being authenticated and measured.

 

Nonetheless, Becket's fish, measuring 42 inches with a girth of 29.5 inches, topped the current 39-pound second-place record lake trout, a fish caught in Lake Ontario.

 

Eastern Lake Erie waters have become a lake trout factory in recent years. Senior aquatic biologist and Lake Erie Unit head Don Einhouse noted that July assessments show an exceptional number of rainbow smelt this year — prime forage for heavy-feeding lake trout.

 

With the poor showing of walleye this summer season, many boaters have dropped deeper, targeting not only lakers but also abundant schools of brown and rainbow trout.

 

The Lake Erie limit for lake trout is set at one fish per angler and fishermen should carefully handle and quickly release lake trout not intended for the creel.

 

For Becket, this one was creel-worthy.