FISHING --  Idaho Falls angler Steve Micek landed an 11.8-pound coho from the Clearwater River on Sunday, Nov. 9, to set an Idaho state record for ocean-run coho salmon.

The catch tops the record set last month as Idaho's first designated coho season kicked off in the Clearwater. Both record fish were caught by anglers casting spoons.

Here's the scoop on the new record from Eric Barker of the Lewiston Tribune:

An Idaho Falls man caught an 11.8-pound coho that is a pending state record on his last cast into the Clearwater River this weekend.

If verified by record keepers at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Steve Micek will end the short reign of Moscow’s Ethan Crawford as Idaho’s coho king.

Micek landed the fish while casting a KO Wobbler Spoon for steelhead Sunday near Orofino. He was fishing with his son, Greg Micek, who saw an article last month about Crawford’s 9.4-pound coho, which set a record in the opening weekend of Idaho’s first-ever sport fishing season for coho. The younger Micek speculated they might have a shot at the record if they got into coho.

“My response was, ‘Yeah right,’ ” Steve Micek said.

They did find some coho, but the fish were in poor shape.

“Most of the ones we saw were pretty well beat up,” he said. “They had been spawning heavily. The tails were damaged, the sides were damaged, but this fish was really clean, like it just arrived,” he said.

The father-son fishing team landed a few female cohos and had good luck with steelhead during their weekend trip to the Clearwater. Late Sunday morning, they decided to quit for the day and head for home rather than wait for the afternoon bite.

“I said I was going to take a few more casts and, on the second cast, I hooked this fish,” he said.

The coho hit hard and pulled strong, but didn’t fight for long.

“I wish I could say it hard-boiled me across the river, but it didn’t,”

Steve Micek said.

It was the first male they landed and required a quick consult with the World Wide Web to verify it was indeed a coho.

“There are so many chinook in the water you have to be really careful,” he said.

 From there, he had the fish measured at the department’s check station and then headed to Harvest Foods to have it weighed on a certified scale. He then had the species verified by Conservation Officer John McClain.

Micek is in the process of filling out the record application and plans to mail the package to Boise. If everything is in order there, he will hold the state record.

Idaho opened the Clearwater River to coho fishing Oct. 17, following a surprisingly large return of the fish declared functionally extinct from the Snake River basin in 1985. The Nez Perce Tribe started a coho recovery program in 1995, using eggs from coho that return to tributaries of the lower Columbia River. After making steady progress, the run hit new highs this fall. Through Monday, more than 17,800 coho were counted crossing Lower Granite Dam. Anglers have caught about 80 coho since the start of the season, which runs through Sunday.

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