Michelle Landowski caught something completely different.
While fishing Saturday on the Fox River at a park in Omro, Wisconsin, she caught a mudpuppy.
“I was fishing for a bluegill or a catfish because that’s what I usually catch off my worms,” she emailed.
Mudpuppies, the only fully aquatic salamander in Wisconsin, are not threatened or endangered in Wisconsin, but listed as a “species with information needs.”
In Illinois, only the common mudpuppy (Necturus maculosus) is found and rarely enough to be state threatened. Most typically, sporadic Illinois catches are reported from Lake Michigan (particularly Navy Pier) and Wolf Lake.
Since this is the first Amphibian of the Week, let’s say AOTW will run very sporadically, as stories merit it, probably on Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.
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