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One of the great bonuses of perch fishing the Chicago lakefront this winter has been the surprise catches of brown trout and lake trout.
Jayson Hernandez kept the saga of big lake trout being caught by perch anglers going. He caught a 32-inch, 10-pound laker at Navy Pier last week.
There have been enough surprise catches that Steve Palmisano at Henry’s Sports and Bait texted, “Don’t forget to bring a landing net.”
Hard-core lakefront angler, Quinn Wunar, after catching both lakers and browns last week, speculated, “That’s why the perch are scattered.”
The big trout can be an adventure on light tackle. Wunar tweeted that he took 40 minutes to land a laker on an ultralight and 4-pound line.
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 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).
