Fish of the Week: Really big Skokie Lagoons walleye

My name is Sey and reside in Skokie. I’ve been fishing the Skokie Lagoons regularly for the past twelve years and want to share a photo of my personal best walleye caught and released this morning. She measured 28 inches long and weighed 10.7lbs on a digital scale. Up to this point it’s been a tough year for me with only one legal sized eye(18″) landed. Caught plenty of 10-17.5″ toss backs. The tactic employed was hopping a large, lip- hooked fathead minnow on a hot orange 1/16th oz leadhead. When my jig was retrieved 8 feet from shore, I felt that familiar tick of a walleye bite. I set the hook into a heavy fish which shook its head and stayed down. Sometimes large cats fight the same way as walleye, so I was holding my breath that this fish didn’t have whiskers. When I saw the flash of gold and brown, I knew it was a trophy eye. It put my UL outfit with 4# mono to the test with short powerful runs. A few moments later my hand could barely get a grip behind the head as I wrestled her to shore. After a quick measurement, weighing, and a couple of mugshots, back into the water she went, unharmed. This fish would have made a great trophy mount, but I could not harvest a fish as healthy and old as this one. Larger fish do not make good table fare. Hoping to catch it again at 30 inches!