Dreaming big on the South Shore Bass Open

When you dream about a 150-boat team bass tournament out of Hammond, Indiana, sleep will be interrupted.

‘‘It will keep me up at night until I see the weather forecast four or five days out,’’ Hammond Fire Department Capt. Dennis Banik said.

Banik is the event organizer/tournament director helping the South Shore Convention & Visitors Authority hold the South Shore Bass Open on Aug. 3-4 out of Hammond Marina.

A bass tournament that big never has been held on southern Lake Michigan.

May would be the ideal time for big fish, but it will be August, a tougher month for smallmouth on Lake Michigan.

One advantage is that the August dates are scheduled around the Bassmaster Elite Series. Big names might come. Canada’s Johnston brothers (Chris and Cory), who have won the Sturgeon Bay Open Bass Tournament multiple times, and Wisconsin’s Seth Feider seem most logical.

Or maybe Mark Zona, who grew up in Homewood. It is weeks before time to sit in the deer stand. What about the VanDam clan? They have enough big-time anglers to fill a couple of boats.

While it’s a tournament, it’s being billed as a family event, with food vendors, a DJ and kids games on shore.

Open waters will be Lake Michigan in Illinois or Indiana. Anglers may lock through to fish Lake Calumet, the Calumet River or the Chicago River.

The team entry is $400 before May 1, then $450. The field will be limited to 150 boats. The cutoff date is July 14. There will be 100% payback. If the field is full, first place should be $30,000. The top four finishers from police, fire, EMS and military (retired or active) will receive additional prizes.

It will be a five-bass daily bag, 14 inches or longer, of largemouth, smallmouth or spotted. (If a spotted is caught, I want to know.) Forward-facing sonar will be allowed. A-rigs will follow state regulations.

The website (southshorecva.com/south-shore-bass-open) went live last week.

Wild things

• Sandhill cranes are moving. Bill Savage (@RogersParkMan on X) posted about big flocks Saturday over Evergreen Park. On Sunday, Jim Hantak emailed from Hillside: ‘‘Five large groups of sandhills were flying over Elmhurst this morning. Too many in each group to count.’’
  
• Jay Damm credited a friend of Joe McFarland (co-author of ‘‘Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States’’) with the first reliable Illinois report of a black morel Saturday around Makanda, south of Carbondale. ‘‘If this weather keeps up, we’re about a month or so away from our first morel,’’ Damm emailed.

Dale Bowman

Stray cast

It would be nice if our political culture cleaned up as well as Chicago River has since I started this column.