About 3:30 p.m. on May 24, Avery Poppe was casting for walleyes using steelhead spinning tackle and earthworm baits. She’d cast her bait up-current and drift-bounced it along the rocky and gravel bottom of an unnamed river near her home in Hayward, Wisconsin.
“I was fishing a river pool just above my twin daughters who were casting in another pool nearby downstream,” Shane tells Wired2fish. “We’d already caught a couple walleyes, when Avery hooked a fish.”
At first Avery said it was just a little one. But then the fish fought stronger and hugged bottom as her 8-foot-6 St. Croix spinning rod bowed deeply.
“I knew then it was a huge brown trout,” said Shane. “She fought the fish for about 6 or 7 minutes, then worked it closer and it came by her sister Alivia. When Alivia saw the size of the trout her eyes got as big as saucers.
“Once Avery got it close and saw her trout in clear river water, she said ‘get the net.’”
Shane netted the massive inland river brown trout while Avery beamed a wide smile.
“Those girls have fished all their lives,” Shane said proudly. “They’ve caught lots of trout and salmon, and that brown was the biggest Avery has ever landed.”
Shane said the sun was high and it was 85 degrees. So the anglers worked fast to take a few photos of Avery’s trout before releasing the healthy brown back into the Hayward area river.
“We didn’t want to risk hurting that great trout,” he said. “We only got a couple photos of her and the brown, and Alivia made a short video of the fish being released.”
The anglers figured the trout’s length at 28 inches, with an estimated weight of 9 or 10 pounds.
Avery was unable to be interviewed by Wired2fish. She was undergoing tendon surgery for an injury incurred as a track and field athlete, so Shane was contacted.
“She’s a sophomore at Viterbo University in LaCosse, Wisconsin,” explained Shane. “Her specialty is the multi-event heptathlon, and she’s an NAIA All-American athlete.
“But her first love might be fishing, and she’s pretty good at it with lots of experience.”
After Avery caught and released her giant inland river brown trout, Shane says he and his two daughters just sat at the river’s edge, talking and enjoying what they’d just experienced.
“We chatted for about an hour – it was a special time for us,” Shane said.
