A bow on the ice-fishing season: A last look at a fine second half of winter and ice fishing for FOTW

Let’s wrap up ice-fishing for the year with Ethan Miller, who caught largemouth bass of 21 and 22 inches this winter in Lake County. That kind of sums up the intense late winter ice fishing in 2020-21.

“[They] barely fit through the hole of my 4-inch auger,” emailed proud dad Chad Miller, who added the largemouth photos when he sent note on woodcock and shed antlers.

We had a half-and-half sort of winter and Miller’s largemouth put a bow on the second half of the winter when ice fishing was special.

Here’s Miller’s other big largemouth. The hat is his hat.

Provided

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 https://chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on 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).