After measuring a 43-inch muskie caught by Kaleb Nahvi, 19, on May 24 on Webster Lake in Indiana, guide Chae Dolsen had a surprise.
Running the reader over the PIT tag, he realized it was the same muskie caught by Dr. Bob Collins on May 17.
‘‘They come within 30 yards of each other, same deep hole, same time of day,’’ Dolsen said. ‘‘Both were caught midmorning, almost the exact same time. Both took a bluegill. We also caught a 44-inch muskie each day, too.’’
In his 23 years of guiding on Webster, Indiana’s fabled muskie water, Dolsen has found that bluegills work well during certain seasons.
The story gave even more Monday morning, when caught the same muskie — a third time in less than three weeks — on a bluegill.
PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tags are implantable microchips that can be read by a reader and can be used to track and identify fish or animals. Dolsen, two of his guides and a friend have readers to document muskie catches on Webster.
‘‘We had 127 tag readings last year between me and my other two guides,’’ said Dolsen, who had the majority of those readings. ‘‘We only had one repeat that we know of from last year.’’
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources can use PIT tags to gauge growth rates and extrapolate population estimates.
According to the DNR’s Webster Lake PIT Tag study, the female muskie — PIT tag 900067000154194 — first was collected in the broodstock survey on April 9, 2019, at 36.9 inches, then on March 31, 2022, at 41.7 inches. So it grew nearly 5 inches in three years, then more than an inch since last year.
The study, which began in 2005, has tangential benefits, such as showing how far some muskie roam. Dolsen said seven or eight that were tagged on Webster were caught in James, and there was the oddball that traveled to Oswego, the farthest lake in the system.
Whether the same fish was recaught often is debated by anglers.
The most notable example locally is the similar appearances of the Illinois-record smallmouth bass (7 pounds, 3 ounces) caught by Joe Capilupo on Oct. 14, 2019, in Monroe Harbor to the smallmouth (6-2.4) caught by Ryan Whitacre on Oct. 19, 2016, by Diversey Harbor.
When I asked Dolsen if he thought this has happened before, he said: ‘‘I think I caught a fish on Skinner three or four times, but without tags you don’t know.’’
Stray cast
It feels as though the Bears have Arlington Heights on a quick-set sucker rig.
