Rare double-striped steelhead caught on the Chicago lakefront

Quinn Wunar messaged on Twitter Saturday, “I’ve caught a lot of fish here in Chicago, but this double-striped winter steelhead yesterday at Burnham is my favorite by far.”

He was fishing solo with water clear enough to see the bottom in 20 feet.

“I was spot fishing basically and saw this gigantic steelhead run two coho off my spawn sac,” he messaged. “In the middle of admiring how big the fish was, it turned back and smacked my bag and we were off. It was an epic fight but the net job was the toughest part with the water being the lowest it’s been in a few years. Yet we both survived to fight another day.”

Double-striped steelhead are rare and usually big bucks. The last one submitted for FOTW was three years ago, caught by Edi Habibovic in the Little Calumet.

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 in 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).