My 11 y/o grandson has been keeping me sane during the pandemic by letting me take him fishing once a week. A couple weeks ago we ran up to the Elkhorn and were having a great time catching some nice cats - blues and channels. He drifted a chubb under a beaver felled tree right off the bank and something hit it and took off. A minute later a big silver fish shot out of the water and put up quite a fight jumping and making some impressive runs. He brought it into the shallows and landed it. He thought he'd caught some alien species. Nope, just a really big goldeye. I've always viewed them as a trash fish and usually either toss them back or chop them up for bait. This was the biggest one I'd ever seen and for kicks and giggles did a quick weight and measure with the Wally World fish scale. It was about 23" long and almost 7" deep and pulled the scale to just under the 5# mark. Took a quick hero picture with him holding it and tossed it back.
Now the rest of the story. I had sometime this week because of the rain and storms to play on the computer and just for kicks looked up the state record fish. The state record goldeye is just under 4# and was less than 21" long.
I am pretty sure I tossed my grandson's state record fish back into the river. I think that may drag down my "Who's the better grandpa' " poll numbers for quite a while.
