Pushing back on snagging salmon on Illinois lakefront

‘‘Gonna need a bigger boat,’’ Ken Carwell cracked as people streamed into the Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club on Tuesday night at Montrose Harbor.

The Chief Brody line from ‘‘Jaws’’ captured the reality of a rare night meeting of the Chicago Fishing Advisory Committee, which began as Mayor Richard Daley’s Fishing Advisory Committee in 1996. I counted a record 42 attendees. Only once before was there a night meeting, in April 2023 at Northerly Island.

Half the crowd came with an agenda: to end snagging on the lakefront.

Quinn Wunar, a top lakefront angler and fishing teacher, spearheaded the effort, which included a petition to end snagging of Chinook and coho salmon on the lakefront.

Right now, snagging salmon is allowed from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 at the Lincoln Park lagoon south of Fullerton, at Jackson Park’s inner and outer harbors, at the Winnetka Power Plant discharge and at the north basin of Waukegan Harbor.

Wunar said he was approaching banning snagging ‘‘not as a hostile thing,’’ recognizing that, for some, it is a cultural lakefront experience.

But he noted that with the changes in lake clarity in the last couple of decades, ‘‘There are more effective methods to catch salmon than snagging. . . . It’s an antiquated approach to targeting these fish.’’

Luke Heim asked, ‘‘How many of you have seen guys snagging in non-designated areas?’’

Nearly every hand went up.

Many told tales of watching illegal snaggers swarm an area, then leave behind a bloody mess on shore.

‘‘It looks like a crime scene after they come through,’’ one angler said. ‘‘No boater wants to walk past them. No dog-walker wants to walk past them.’’

The group had photos of other species (brown trout, steelhead, bass, etc.) caught by snaggers.

‘‘At the end of the day, we are just trying to make Chicago a better fishing place,’’ said Danny ‘‘Taks’’ Borgert, a top lakefront angler. ‘‘A lot of people don’t want to come because of snaggers.’’

Committee members offered suggestions about how best to proceed. Changing fishing regulations doesn’t come overnight.

Chair Stacey Greene-Fenlon opened with a background of the committee’s work and promised to do night meetings regularly. She then started reports.

Key gleanings:

• Jessica Prescott-Smith, the program and event facilitator for the Chicago Park District, said Carter Pilch, the new head of fishing programming, was starting. The post had been vacant since Carl Vizzone resigned in early June. She said the pier-pass program would start as usual Nov. 15.

• Ben Alden, the director of operations for Suntex/Chicago Harbors, said portable toilets will be at Montrose, Belmont, Diversey, Burnham and 31st.

• Ice fishing was mentioned in the plans of both Jonathan Schlesinger and Frank Sladek, the coordinators of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Urban Fishing Programs for Chicago and northern Illinois, respectively.

• Steve Silic, a fisheries biologist for the Forest Preserves of Cook County, noted that Cook receives its fall trout from three hatcheries and explained the variations.

• Greene-Fenlon, who gave a lakefront fishing report, said that with the weather change, ‘‘[Salmon] are going to drop those eggs quick, kinda like my tree with its leaves.’’

• Greene-Fenlon also said Mayor Brandon Johnson still hasn’t responded to the committee.

• Carwell said Chicago No Limits Fishing ran 30 trips with 90 to 100 people in its first full year. When Dan Bernstein, a lakefront angler and a midday host on The Score, asked about the most notable catch, Carwell said it was a huge goldfish.

• Nicole Machuca, a Southeast Side resident/former active committee member, raised questions about the proposed Quantum Campus near the North Slip (85th Street), Chicago’s No. 1 winter fishing spot. Keys were whether there would be a warm-water discharge and access. Kirkland Requejo noted that similar sites in other states had agreements on public access. Greene-Fenlon hopes to attend the next community meeting Tuesday.

• MidWest Outdoors’ Jim O’Neil, who is also the bass-fishing coach at Marist, said: ‘‘Chicago is a fishing city. I want that slogan to catch on.’’ He noted money is a driver in Chicago, so he pitched trying to have a spearfishing championship here. I need to mull that one over. I suspect others will, too.

• The regular question of ongoing fishing access at Navy Pier with the coming of the Navy Pier Marina was rehashed.

• ‘Birders are connected, and they know to rally,” Machuca said. That prompted Bernstein to ask whether birders and anglers could hold a summit to see where their interests align. From working on other lakefront committees, Greene-Fenlon thought both groups share interests, though she noted, ‘‘They’re not going to sit around the campfire and sing 'Kumbaya.'" As a cross-group guy, I think there’s more overlap and commonality than not.

• Reminder: Email questions for the committee to chicagofishingadvisory@gmail.com.