There are surprises while fishing, and there are big surprises. Take the northern pike that Chicagoan Danny Napleton caught at 95th Street over the weekend while fishing for coho.
That’s a good pike, considering it was his first one.
“A slow retrieve of a green and silver spoon did the trick,’’ his buddy Pat Wilkins emailed. “Not a coho, but it was a good consolation prize!’’
Indeed.
Because they “let her go to be caught another day,’’ Wilkins emailed that “unfortunately, we did not get a chance to measure it. Certainly looked to be 35-36 inches, but man was it fat. Had to have been close to 14-15 lbs.”
He also sent along some more details.
“He was fishing behind us and said he had something,” Wilkins emailed. “Turning around expecting to see his rod dancing from a 2 pound coho, it was doubled over from something big. We were able to get it in the net after a good fight, luckily it did not break him off.
“He started fishing the lakefront with a few of us within the last year and certainly has caught the fishing bug. He wants to get back out there this week already!”
That’s understandable.
FOTW, the celebration of big fish and good stories around Chicago fishing, appears Wednesdays on the Sun-Times outdoors page.
Send nominations to straycasts@sbcglobal.net or via Facebook (Dale Bowman) or Twitter (@BowmanOutside).
