Bart Piet caught and released a 41-inch northern pike estimated at 14-20 pounds on Oct. 23 near Buckingham Fountain.
“I was using a Medussa lure,” Piet emailed. “It had followed up and missed at shore, then smoked it on the next cast. Some tourists from France had helped me net it and took the picture. As they were walking by, I yelled ‘Help!’ The fish came unhooked in the net and swam away with little help.
“It’s been a great year for pike all over the city and in the harbors. I’m a social studies CPS teacher and I can fish almost daily in the summer.”
Hang on, he caught it with a Medussa, a heavy plastic bait used for muskies? That meant he was targeting pike and not just catching them accidentally while trying for smallmouth bass or salmon.
“Correct,” he replied. “I’m a huge muskie guy and this is my local practice, which has been fruitful. The Chicago pike have enjoyed all of my muskie lures: big bucktails, jerkbaits, plastics, rubber, and more. They’re very aggressive and larger in Chicago, more so than northern Wisconsin, I have found.”
Zing.
FOTW, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter, as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times. The online posting here at chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on in the wide world of the outdoors.
To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), Twitter (@BowmanOutside) or Instagram (@BowmanOutside).
