'We were fishing for anything that could bite': Iron youth catches state record Coho on Lake Superior

IRON—Austin Stoltenburg says he enjoys the fight whenever he hooks a fish. Stoltenburg knew he had big one on the hook on Lake Superior.

Stoltenburg, 12, of Iron, caught a state record 12-pound, 5-ounce Coho salmon on Lake Superior while fishing with his father Ryan and a friend of his dad.

“We really don’t fish Duluth a lot,” Stoltenburg, who will be a seventh grader at Mountain Iron-Buhl School said. “We were fishing for anything that could bite. But I could tell it was a pretty big fish. I thought it was a King (salmon) because it was so big.”

Stoltenburg and his father Ryan often fish in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Ryan also owns property and a tugboat in Alaska, from where they just returned from a fishing trip.

But the trip to Lake Superior turned out to be memorable.

“My buddy was coming from Fargo to go fishing on Lake Superior,” Ryan Stoltenburg said. “We met at Swan Lake and didn’t catch much there except a couple of northerns. We went to bed late, got up early and went to Lake Superior.”

The weather at Lake Superior wasn’t too good, Ryan said.

But the three began fishing near McQuade Small Craft Harbor, about halfway up the North Shore between Duluth and Two Harbors.

“It was super foggy,” Ryan said. “You couldn’t see more than ten feet beyond your bow. All of a sudden, I saw a bunch of minnows and I said, ‘Let’s try here’.”

Abut 10 minutes after putting out a downrigger, there was a tug on it, Ryan said.

“I handed it to him (Austin), went back to steering the boat and he reeled it in,” Ryan said. “My friend missed netting it on the first try, but got it on the second try. When it hit the bottom of the boat, he said,

‘What is it?’ I said, ‘It could be a state record Coho’.”

After catching some additional fish, the three took the big Coho to a bait shop where a Minnesota Conservation Officer happened to be there, Ryan said.

The conservation officer told them what to do with the fish, he said.

The Coho broke the previous state record by more than two pounds, Ryan said.

Ryan says they want to get out on Lake Superior again in his 21 ½ foot Larson deck boat which heconverted to a fishing boat.

“We’re hoping to get out there next weekend if we can,” he said.

Like before, they will be looking for bait fish before dropping their lines, he said.

“That’s the key,” Ryan said. “If you find bait, you’ll find fish. That’s literally what I try first. If I see bait, that’s where I’m droppin’.”

Ryan said an abundance of bait fish in Lake Superior could bode well for anglers.

“I’ve never seen bait fish on Superior like I’ve seen this year,” Ryan said. “They’re (fish) getting pretty fat out there. They’re thinking the record might be broken again.”

Meanwhile, Austin says the record Coho is bringing some attention with it.

“A lot of my friends’ parents have been talking about it,” Austin said. “They say ‘He caught the state record and he knows my son’.”