Call it the legend of the sucker amigos. That’s what anglers Todd Smitham and Jonathan Miller call it. The two were fishing together on Salmon Lake on Memorial Day when Smitham hooked in to a nearly 7-pound largescale sucker.
“We knew right away that it was probably a record,” Smitham said. “We knew because we studied the record table and know the species.”
One reason they are familiar with the Montana fish record table is because Miller’s name is on it for catching the record longnose sucker. Miller caught his record fish on Hauser Reservoir in 2022. That sucker weighed 4.78 pounds and was 22.25 inches long. Smitham was there, too.
By using sonar, Smitham and his buddies located a pod of large fish swimming at the bottom of Salmon Lake. Hoping to hook in to a pike or a big brown trout, Smitham tossed in a tiny marabou jig.
“It was a big sucker fish!” Smitham said. “As soon as Jonathan got a look at it, he said, ‘Is that another record?’”
Once they determined it probably was – weighing in at 6.86 pounds and 24.5 inches – they put it in the live well.
“We wanted to keep fishing,” Smitham said. “And we knew that fish lose weight the longer they are out of water.”
Suckers get their name from the way most of them use their mouths to, well, suck up aquatic insects and algae. The highly sensitive mouth helps a sucker find and dislodge food from a river or lake bottom that lipless fish often can’t reach.
Montana is home to nine species of suckers: bigmouth buffalo, smallmouth buffalo, river carpsucker, shorthead redhorse, largescale sucker, longnose sucker, blue sucker, plains (previously mountain) sucker and white sucker.
Largescale suckers average about 14 inches in length and 5 pounds in weight. They have dark brassy sides and upper head; a cream lower head, lower body and underside; and dark fins.
Longnose suckers average about 13 inches in length and can weigh up to 5 pounds. They have a long snout with olive back, upper sides and head. Spawning males sport red sides above a dark band.
When Smitham and his angling buddies were done for the day, they had the fish weighed on a certified scale at Super 1 in Helena. It had lost a tenth of a pound since the time they weighed it on the lake.
Smitham plans to have the fish mounted.
“As of right now, I still have it frozen in the freezer,” he said.
¡Viva los sucker amigos!
This content is sourced from
Montana Fish Wildlife parks
. It reflects the author's views and has not been edited by our newsroom. It may have been generated using AI assistance.
