Local fishing guide Richard Preis holds the nearly 9-pound salmon he and an unnamed client pulled out of Lake Colby on Thursday. (Provided photo)

SARANAC LAKE — A guide and a client reeled in a nearly 9-pound salmon from Lake Colby while ice fishing on Thursday.

Richard Preis, a guide for Adirondack All Seasons Guide Service for eight years, was out on Lake Colby with a client from Connecticut in the morning when they got a major bite.

When the tip-up shot up at around 11 a.m., Preis thought it was just another perch. But when he saw his client walking circles around the hole, he said to himself “Oh, this is something big” and ran down.

Preis said the salmon took 15 minutes to reel in.

“It was as big as the hole,” he said.

They ended up grabbing it by the inside of the mouth to pull it out. The client had been quiet all day, focused and intently fishing. But when they brought this monster salmon onto the ice, “he was screaming,” Preis said.

He said the dark coloration on its skin indicates it was an older salmon.

They didn’t measure the length, but Preis guessed it was around 36-38 inches long.

He’s caught plenty of salmon before on Colby, but nothing like this. Usually, they weigh around 2 to 3 pounds. This one clocked in at 8.96 pounds. Preis said the closest he’s seen was down in Old Forge, but this was even bigger.

Jon Herrman, a fish culturist at the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Adirondack Fish Hatchery in Lake Clear, said this was likely a landlocked Atlantic salmon his staff stocked at Lake Colby near the end of November.

“We stock our brood stocks in Lake Colby at the end of our egg take and they range between 3 to 5 years old,” he said.

If it was 9 pounds, Herrman said this fish was likely around 5 years old.

Preis and his client cooked the fish up for dinner with his neighbor on Friday night. He said it was so big, they needed to share it, and his neighbor cooks a mean salmon.