A tail of two suckers: Angler buddies set fish records for two species in Catostomidae family

Two guys. Two state records. Same fish family. And they were standing in the same boat both times.

Todd Smitham and Jonathan Miller have been calling it the legend of the sucker amigos — and honestly, that nickname earns it. The two were out on Salmon Lake over Memorial Day weekend when Smitham dropped a tiny marabou jig on a pod of fish he’d marked with sonar near the bottom. He was hoping for a pike or maybe a big brown trout. What he got was a largescale sucker that weighed in at 6.86 pounds and stretched 24.5 inches.

“It was a big sucker fish!” Smitham said. “As soon as Jonathan got a look at it, he said ‘Is that another record?’”

That word — another — is what makes this story worth telling.

Miller already has his name in the Montana record book for a longnose sucker he pulled out of Hauser Reservoir back in 2022 — 4.78 pounds, 22.25 inches. Smitham was in the boat for that one too. These two know the record table the way some guys know box scores. So when Smitham’s rod bent over on Salmon Lake and that fish rolled up alongside the hull, they both knew what they were looking at.

“We knew right away that it was probably a record,” Smitham said. “We knew because we studied the record table and know the species.”

They put it in the live well and kept fishing — smart move, since fish shed weight the longer they’re out of water. At the end of the day, they got it on a certified scale at Super 1 in Helena. It had dropped a tenth of a pound since they’d weighed it on the lake, settling at 6.86 pounds. Still a record.

In my experience, most anglers couldn’t tell a largescale sucker from a longnose if their license depended on it. But these two clearly did their homework. Largescale suckers run about 14 inches on average and top out around 5 pounds, with dark brassy sides, a cream-colored belly, and dark fins. Longnose suckers are a touch slimmer — averaging around 13 inches, up to 5 pounds — with an olive back and that distinctive long snout. Spawning males show off red sides above a dark lateral band, which is actually pretty sharp-looking for a fish most people throw back without a second glance.

Suckers get their name from exactly what you’d think: most species use a highly sensitive, fleshy mouth to suck up aquatic insects and algae right off the bottom — food that a lot of other fish can’t reach. Montana’s got nine sucker species total: bigmouth buffalo, smallmouth buffalo, river carpsucker, shorthead redhorse, largescale sucker, longnose sucker, blue sucker, plains (previously mountain) sucker, and white sucker. They’re not glamorous. But they’re more interesting than most people give them credit for.

As for Smitham’s record largescale — it’s currently sitting frozen in his freezer. He plans to have it mounted. Given that he and Miller have now combined for two records in the same fish family, caught on two different Montana waters, that mount is going to look pretty good on the wall.

¡Viva los sucker amigos!

By Peggy O’Neill, FWP Outreach Editor

To read more about suckers, click here.