Akeley Fahnholz is building a fishing record that would be the envy of anglers three times her age. The young angler from Carmen, in Idaho's Lemhi County, has just claimed her second state record, this time for a fish barely anyone tries to catch: the chiselmouth.
Fahnholz landed the 11.25-inch chiselmouth on the Salmon River near the town of Salmon on 8 June, then released it to set a new Idaho catch-and-release state record. The species is an unusual trophy. Chiselmouth are members of the minnow family that rarely top 12 inches and feed by scraping algae and insects from river rocks with a hard, chisel-shaped lower jaw.
"Chiselmouths, as their name implies, literally chisel their dinner off river rocks," Idaho Fish and Game said when it announced the record. The department noted they are the only fish of their taxonomic group in the state and almost never turn up in the record books, so it paired the announcement with a short guide to help anglers recognise one.
This is not Fahnholz's first appearance on the record list. In February 2023, at just five years old, she caught a 14 1/8-inch peamouth on the Snake River near Bliss to take that species' state catch-and-release record from her uncle. Before that, she was recognised for landing a jack Chinook salmon at Hayden Pond aged four.
Idaho's catch-and-release program certifies records by length rather than weight. Anglers submit photographs of the fish against a ruler and return it to the water alive, a system that has opened the record book to smaller, overlooked species and to young anglers documenting whatever ends up on their line.
