Rhode Island angler Zachary Taylor knew he was holding something special when all 26 inches of rainbow trout came through the ice on Jan. 18. He said it took “some finagling” to squeeze 21 inches of girth through the hole, and what came out was a 15-pound, 12-ounce rainbow that beat the previous state record by more than 3 pounds.
“Finally, with some finagling, it squeezed through,” Taylor told the Valley Breeze newspaper. “I was literally shaking with excitement and adrenaline.”
Taylor’s fish easily replaced the existing record of 12 pounds, 9.2 ounces, which had stood since 2020. It’s the result of Rhode Island’s stocking program, which seeds more than 80 waters with stocked trout. The new state record came from Peck Pond, a 13-acre pond that straddles the Connecticut border in northwestern Rhode Island. The pond is on the 100-acre Pulaski Memorial Recreational Area.