Nine-year-old Grand Forks resident Noah Dalla Lana reeled in top prize in the Youth Fishing Award at the BC Wildlife Federation last week in Fort St. John.
The young angler also won another award for catching a 13-pound, one-ounce pike.
Dalla Lana said that he first thought the prize fish’s bite was just a rock snag.
“I moved to the edge of the beach where the rocks began and cast my rod out,” Dalla Lana told the BC Wildlife Federation, “[I] let it sink and started reeling,” and that’s when his line snapped taut.
He thought that his favourite spinner lure had caught on the rocks where he was casting.
“As I called my dad to come help get the line unsnagged, [it] started to peel off my reel.”
Dalla Lana said he spent the next 10 minutes “fighting [the] biggest freshwater fish of my life.”
