Really big walleye caught off downtown Chicago
"We were all in awe when we saw this thing surface,’’ Brian Markham said Monday. ‘‘This is downtown Chicago waters.’’
Markham was speaking about the 26-inch walleye, weighed at 8.1 pounds, he caught and released Friday while fishing with Capt. Ryan Whitacre near DuSable Harbor.
‘‘It was a giant,’’ Whitacre said Friday. ‘‘When it hit the surface, we were like, ‘[Expletive]. I can’t believe it.’ ’’
He said it’s the only walleye he has seen on Lake Michigan after more than 20 years of fishing it intensely.
‘‘Good to see — a big, healthy walleye,’’ Whitacre said.
‘‘I have never caught a walleye that big,’’ Markham said. ‘‘We caught some good ones in Canada, but not with that size and girth.’’
It had been a tough day until then, with only a few smallmouth bass they were targeting with tubes and jigs.
‘‘We were slow-rolling tubes, trying for smallmouth,’’ Markham said as he fed his 17-month-old daughter breakfast. ‘‘Sure enough, this thing hit, and I said, ‘This is big.’ We saw the golden sides, and our jaws just dropped.’’
Walleye are a very rare catch in the Chicago waters of Lake Michigan. Mike Osuch holds the unofficial-record Chicago walleye weighed on a certified scale (7 pounds, 5.5 ounces at Henry’s Sports and Bait) that he caught in September 2008 off the point of Northerly Island.
They ended up catching 10 smallmouth, the walleye and a freakishly big freshwater drum Whitacre estimated at 15 pounds.
‘‘I was almost more surprised by that — the biggest, ugliest thing I’ve seen,’’ Markham said.
Markham, 32, is no stranger to historic fishing. As a senior in 2010, he led De La Salle to victory in the Wolf Lake Sectional to qualify for the Illinois High School Association’s state finals in bass fishing. Nineteen years ago, I featured the Markham family in a column about Thanksgiving perch fishing at Navy Pier.
Wild things
Weather seems better to motivate sandhill cranes to migrate. . . . I pulled my peppers and tomatoes Sunday (latest ever, by far) after the Packers-Bears game to clear my head, not because I needed to. They were still producing.
Stray cast
The Sox’ home opener is March 27 against the Angels. As if overboard, I clutch any lifeline thrown.