Kreighbaum said he didn’t recognize its significance; he just thought it was a big fish.

State officials said the trout was 44 inches long and weighed 37 1/2 pounds, beating the previous record by 8 pounds.

The fish is also much older than the 25 year old who caught it. Biologists estimated the fish has been around since the late 1970s, because of a clipped fin. In the 1970s, four rounds of lake trout stockings took place in southern Lake Michigan, and all those fish had a fin clipped. The average Lake Trout caught in southern Lake Michigan is about to 8 to 10 years old, weighing around 7 and half to 8 pounds