At 25, Sean Aimetti of New London has already hooked what may be the biggest fish he’ll ever land in the rest of his years as an angler.

“It was the catch of a lifetime,” he said.

On opening day of fishing season April 18, Aimetti was spending the afternoon fishing from a friend’s dock on Long Pond in Ledyard. Casting with a gold Kastmaster lure on the end of his pole, he reeled in an 8-pound, 24-inch lake trout.

“I don’t think I would have been able to reel it in if I was in a boat,” he said. The fish followed his lure up to the dock, enabling Aimetti to lean over, grab its mouth and scoop it up around the middle.

Aimetti, general manager at Planet Fitness in Waterford, has been fishing since he was a boy. He said he’s not an avid angler, “but I like to go every once in a while.”

The 8-pound fish wasn’t a new state record — that hasn’t been topped since 1918, when an angler caught a 29-pound, 13-ounce monster trout, according to the 2015 Connecticut Angler’s Guide, a publication of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Still, Aimetti figures this will probably be his personal record fish.

“I filled it with stuffing and baked it, and shared it with my girlfriend,” he said. “But I cut it in thirds, so I still have some in the freezer.”

The 2015 Connecticut Anglers Guide can be found at: http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/fishing/anglers_guide/anguide.pdf.

j.benson@theday.com