The age of a trophy Lake Trout

[gofish435]

First of all i want to give a huge shout out to the Utah and the Wyoming Fisheries biologists and a researcher at the University Of Wyoming for all their help and to Mr. John Holy for a amazing taxidermy job. Two summers ago we were lucky enough to catch the Utah record lake trout from flaming gorge. Later that summer we had a graduate student from the university of Wyoming who is doing research on lake trout from the lake contact us and ask us if he could have the head from the fish for his study. At that time we had the fish at the taxidermist so we had to tell him i would get it to him when i could. Fast forward one summer we got the fish back and the head and i got in touch with the student and arranged for the biologist there at the lake if he would pick it up from us when we came up to fish and get it to the university which he did. Recently we got those results back and they were really surprising almost shocking to us. After talking to the student i have learned a lot on the growth rates and age of the fish from flaming gorge i.e. they aren't as old as everyone thinks. (see pics below)
As you can see the fish was only 16 years old and you can see in its first 12 years it grew very rapidly and the studies he has done on many fish from the gorge  that will continue due to the lake and the food source. Long story short is yes i agree some catch and release of trophy fish (if done correctly) is good but no i don't think harvesting fish across all size ranges is hurting the lake and  in fact he agreed we need to harvest not just the little ones but a sustainable amount of all lake trout. The pic below is the otolith out of the fish and they aged  it twice to verify its age. Its amazing to me that just in the years i have been fishing at the gorge we have had the potential to grow almost three generations of lake trout to over 50 lbs.
That's Amazing !! Talking to him just like any species there will be the ones that are big and little or long or short or have big horns or little horns or whatever but over all the lake trout in flaming gorge are growing much faster than people think and it wont ruin the lake if a few bigger fish are harvested for someone to enjoy on the wall.
i posted this with some reservation due to all the negativity we received from killing this fish but i think the fisherman need to see the research data and understand what is happening to the lake we all love to fish on. If we don't start getting some of these fish out of the lake it will impact it in a very negative way They will literally eat them selves out of house and home 
just thought i would share the info 

That's interesting stuff.  Thanks for sharing the information.

It's almost like determining the age of a tree.