Retiree catches imminent record Chinook salmon catch from his pontoon

James says that as the fish made one stubborn run after another, he hoped that the $29 Walmart rod and reel set his Uncle Vern gave him 15 years ago was up to the task. The original 20-pound line was still on the reel, and he had only used it a handful of times before.

While he fought the fish, Nancy reeled the downrigger ball up from 80 feet while Tony operated the landing net, with Emily filming the action on her cell phone.

The video of the fight is less than four minutes long and begins as James is already working. He says he fought the salmon for about five minutes in total, with his rod bent tightly the entire time.

James keeps saying in the video that he can tell it’s a big salmon, probably the biggest one he’s ever hooked. By the time he gets it this close to Tony’s net, the whole crew is stunned.

“Oh my god!” Emily exclaims as the chinook (also known as a king salmon) plops onto the pontoon. “He doesn’t even look real, he’s so big!”

After James released the salmon, which had been caught on a green-and-white soft plastic squid towed behind a blue-and-white shark, he weighed the fish using a small scale.

“It was 33 pounds 9 ounces, so I thought it was a state record,” said James, a retired power company technician who lives in Malta. “It didn’t fit in my livewell, so we put it in a cooler with ice and went fishing again. I was hoping we’d catch another salmon. So we went trolling again in 130 feet of water, about a mile or so from the dam, looking for another chinook.”

By 5 p.m., they still hadn’t caught any salmon, so they headed back to Fort Peck Marina to try to weigh the fish. The marina didn’t have a certified scale, nor was there a nearby grocery store. Luckily, the vendor was willing to help, and he contacted Steve Dalbey, a regional fisheries program manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Dalbey spoke with James, and they made a plan to meet at Reynolds Market in Glasgow at 7 p.m.

Once there, the chinook continued to eat the small scales from the market. Eventually, a staff member found a large enough scale for the fish, which weighed 32.62 pounds. It was 38 inches long with an astonishing 28 inches in circumference.

Read more: Watch: ‘Absolute Beast’ of a King Salmon Proves Why the Next World Record Will Come From Argentina

James has not yet been officially notified by the state that his record catch has been certified. But he is confident that the catch will surpass the previous state record of 32.05 pounds, caught by Greg Haug in 2020. That fish also came from Fort Peck, which has a population of landlocked chinook thanks to MFWP’s ongoing stocking efforts.

“Dalbey told me my salmon is absolutely the new record, and he signed all the paperwork and filed it with the state.”

James has his salmon mounted by Northern Anglers Taxidermy in Billings. But he didn’t have a cooler big enough to transport the frozen fish to them, so he made one himself out of Styrofoam and wood.

“It takes over a year to get the fish back from the taxidermist,” James says. “I decided to hang it at my friend Tony’s River’s Bend Assisted Living Center, which he owns in Malta. I think people there would enjoy seeing it on their wall, and it’s close enough that I can go and look at it whenever I want.”