A fisherman in Tennessee recently caught the state's biggest-ever cutthroat trout, and it bested the previous record by nearly two pounds. Charlie Fulton hooked the sizable trout this summer while fishing from a jet boat beneath a large dam on the Fort Patrick Henry Reservoir, he tells Field & Stream.
"We fish the reservoir every year for trout, but this year was special because they opened the dam up," he says. "The only way you can get up there while the dam is open is to run a jet boat. You'd knock your prop off trying to get up there with an outboard."
Fulton and his fishing partners got to the Boone Dam—which impounds a portion of the South Fork Holston River—shortly after the TVA opened the locks at 2 p.m. on June 28, 2024. When baitfish began spilling over the dam, it initiated a big-fish feeding frenzy.
He says he was fishing a jerkbait and had just finished landing a 5-and-a-half pound brown trout when the record-breaking cutthroat hit. "I knew it was big as soon as I set the hook," he recalls. "I fought him forever, and when I got him in, I didn't even know what kind of fish I had."
Cutthroat trout aren't native to Tennessee or any other waterway east of the Mississippi River. They were brought into the Volunteer State in the 1950s and 60s, but populations didn't get a foothold then thanks to low flows and poor water quality. Wildlife officials didn't stock them again until December 2021, when thousands were released into the South Fork Holston River, the Hiawasee River, and the Elk River.
Fulton says they're thriving now. "There's a lot of stuff for them to eat up by that dam, and they can get big," he says. "If you've got a boat that can get up there, you can do really good."
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One of Fulton's fishing buddies knew right away that he'd hooked a cutthroat—and that is was likely a new state record. He got on his phone and looked up the standing record, which was a 4-pound, 12-ouncer caught by Palmer Tipton in 2023. Fulton's trout bested Palmer's by more than 1.8 pounds. "It seems like the record goes up by two pounds every year or so since they started stocking them again," he says. "I'm just hoping I can hold on to this one for a little while."
