A crappie in the neighborhood of the Illinois records was caught, and released, in Oswego

Angel Rodriguez caught and released a crappie in record range.

His crappie, caught from an Oswego subdivision pond on a jig, was 19 inches and weighed 4 pounds, 10 ounces.

“l told him it might be an Illinois record,” Floyd Nelson messaged. “He didn’t want to take it to the bait shop to get it documented or nothing, said he just wanted to release it.’’

Nelson’s right on it being the right size for a possible record. All three Illinois crappie records are close to the same weight: white, 4-7, Kevin Dennis, April 8, 1973, Morgan County farm pond; black, 4-8, John Hampton, May 15, 1976, Rend Lake; and hybrid, 4-8.8, Ryan Povolish, March 28, 2017, Kinkaid Lake.

Provided

“That’s the jig,” Nelson messaged. “I kept it for a souvenir.”

I understand that.

For perspective, the Illinois’ last crappie record, Povolish’s hybrid, was 18 1/8th inches long with a girth of 16 ¹⁄₄ .

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 chicago.suntimes.com/outdoorsgoes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.

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