A college baseball pitcher in Colorado has caught a walleye measuring longer than the state record for the species.
Cole Philip, a junior at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, was fishing April 3 at Brush Hollow State Wildlife Area when he reeled in a walleye measuring 31.75 inches.
That’s substantially longer than the catch-and-release length record of 30 inches, set at Trinidad Reservoir in 2022.
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But according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Philip (pictured above) was not trying for a catch-and-release record. He kept the fish, presumably to eat.
He was reeling a jerk bait when the “monster” walleye struck. It weighed 13.26 pounds, well shy of the state weight record of 18.81 pounds.
For comparison, the world-record walleye, according to the International Game Fish Assn., weighed 25 pounds. That catch occurred at Tennessee’s Old Hickory Lake in 1960.
–Images courtesy of Colorado Parks and Wildlife SE Region
