A 20-year-old powerplant inspector from Bethel, Connecticut, landed a 16-pound, 7.5-ounce rainbow trout from the West Branch of the Farmington River on April 11 — breaking a state record that had stood since 1998.
Richard Courtright’s catch was confirmed by the Connecticut Fish and Wildlife division of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). It surpassed the previous state record of 14 pounds, 10 ounces, set at Mansfield Hollow Lake nearly three decades ago.
The catch came on April 11 — the first legal day of the year to harvest trout in Connecticut — and landed four hours after the 76th annual Riverton Fishing Derby wrapped up that morning.
He Thought It Was a Log
Courtright spotted the fish before he ever cast a line, noticing a “rosy red cheek” visible behind a rock about 10 feet from shore.
“I thought it was a log at first and then I saw its head, and I freaked out,” Courtright told Wired2Fish.
After working through spinners, Rapalas, and salmon eggs without success, he ran back to his car for a single mealworm. Using a vintage open-face spinning reel, 6-pound test line, a size-8 hook, and a couple of weights, he put the mealworm in front of the fish — and it struck.
The fight that followed, Courtright said, felt like “pulling in a sheet of plywood.” The fish made several downstream runs and circled back upstream before he finally netted it himself. It measured 31 inches long with a girth of 21.25 inches.
A Father Watching from the Rocks
The catch carried extra meaning for the Courtright family. Richard’s father — also named Richard — was watching from a nearby ledge but could not make his way down to help. He is recovering from a stroke suffered on March 15.
“All I could do was watch,” the elder Courtright told Wired2Fish. “I couldn’t even help him net the fish. He did it by himself.”
After landing the fish, the two drove to a nearby grocery store’s fish market to get it weighed on a certified scale. It will be mounted by a taxidermist — destined, the younger Courtright said, for the wall above his bed.
The Fish Had a Job Before This
The record trout had been stocked in the river just the day before the catch. Matt Devine, a fisheries biologist with the Connecticut Fisheries Division, explained that the fish had spent years at the Kensington State Fish Hatchery serving an unusual purpose: coaching Atlantic salmon to eat.
Hatchery-raised salmon sometimes resist feeding on pellets. The solution is to mix them with rainbow trout, which take to pellets immediately. The trout’s aggressive feeding behavior prompts the salmon to join in.
DEEP noted that once salmon notice the trout splashing at feeding time, “they get eager to join the action.”
“These fish reach the end of their potential, whether it’s after spawning or helping other fish eat, and then their job after that is to go make a memory for someone, and that’s exactly what happened,” Devine told Wired2Fish.
The fish stocked the day before the derby were all tagged. The record catch was the largest of the group.
How Does It Compare?
To put the 16-pound catch in perspective: the all-tackle world weight record for rainbow trout is 48 pounds, set by Sean Konrad in Canada in 2009, according to the International Game Fish Association. The world-record length — 37 inches — was set by Mark Armistead in New Zealand in 2020.
Connecticut’s new record falls well short of those benchmarks, but it ended a nearly three-decade drought for the state’s trout record books — and gave one father a moment he won’t forget.
“Just to be with him and watch him catch the fish, it means a lot to me, you know?” Richard Sr. told Wired2Fish.
SOURCES & LINKS
- Source 1: WFSB (Gray Television), Rob Polansky, April 23, 2026 — https://www.wfsb.com/2026/04/23/connecticut-angler-reels-record-rainbow-trout/
- Source 2: Wired2Fish, Dan Wassmann, April 23, 2026 — https://www.wired2fish.com/news/massive-rainbow-trout-shatters-28-year-old-connecticut-record
- Source 3: Connecticut Fish and Wildlife / DEEP (official agency, referenced in both sources above)
