What is it? Progression of an Illinois-record lake whitefish

We’ll get to Ricardo Cruz catching the next Illinois record whitefish.

But let’s enjoy and understand the process of getting there. It is a journey to have a state record fish recognized.

Start with Cruz going to the east side of Montrose Harbor Wednesday evening, July 27, 2016, with his family and planning to grill sausages while perch fishing from shore on Lake Michigan.

About 6 p.m. he caught–using a minnow near the bottom on a drop-shot rig under a slip-float–the first fish and couldn’t identify it.

God bless modern technology.

His wife Angela took a photo (the one at the top) with Lake Michigan as the background. He posted it on the “Chicago powerline fishing” group on Facebook and asked if anybody knew what it was.

Vic Hurtowy identified it as a whitefish, then notified me. You should remember Hurtowy. He pioneered kayak fishing on Lake Michigan decades before kayaks evolved into the high-tech vessels they are now; and he was the one-time protege of the late Ralph Frese of Chicagoland Canoe Base.

When I saw the photo and another photo of Cruz weighing it (right) on a handheld scale at 2.95 pounds, I knew Cruz, who lives in the Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, had caught the state record.

I contacted Cruz to make sure he had not cleaned it. He had not, so we met at 6 a.m. Thursday, July 28, 2016, when Henry’s Sports and Bait opened in Bridgeport and before he had to be at work at 7 a.m. as a Local 399 engineer.

“I was going to release it, but it had swallowed the hook so I kept it,’’ Cruz said when we met in Henry’s parking lot. “I knew it wasn’t a carp or a drum, but I didn’t know what it was.’’

I said whitefish, one of the best tasting fish in Lake Michigan, were regularly caught at places as near as St. Joseph, Michigan for decades in the fall and spring.

That is another unique part of Cruz’s catch, it was caught in the dog days of summer. In recent years, catches of whitefish spread around the southern lip of Lake Michigan widely enough that both Illinois and Indiana added whitefish to their records list.

Capt. Tim Wojnicz on his FinQuest charter boat caught the inaugural Illinois-record whitefish (2 pounds, 7.8 ounces) on May 8, 2012 while perch fishing off Waukegan.

It was remarkable because he had caught the first Illinois-record burbot (8.85 pounds) less than two weeks earlier on April 27, 2012.

Steve Palmisano, who opened up Henry’s, handled the bait customers first, then brought out the tray for the certified scale. As noted above, Cruz had weighed his fish with a handheld scale at 2.95 pounds. When Henry’s digital scale lit up, it read 3.10 pounds.

Palmisano and I signed off as witnesses to the weight. It was 21 1/2 inches long with a girth of 11 inches.

Cruz was the first to admit to the luck, saying, “Normally I don’t keep something I don’t know. But he had swallowed the hook.’

Thursday afternoon, veteran biologist Steve Robillard (right) certified it as a lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis).

Friday morning, July 29, 2016, Cruz, Palmisano and I finalized the paperwork, which Robillard had left. Then Palmisano mailed it. Eventually, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources will send a plaque to Cruz in recognition of his Illinois record lake whitefish.

Cruz, who has a small apartment, gave permission to Henry’s to have his fish mounted and displayed in their shop. Palmisano will have Grams Gamefish Taxidermy in Burbank mount the record whitefish.

After Wojnicz set the Illinois records for burbot and whitefish, I wrote, “Neither fish will last long as the state record.’’ Yet, both of Wojnicz’s Illinois records stood more than four years.

But I will guarantee (said in the voice of the late Cajun chef Justin Wilson) bigger burbot and whitefish were caught in Illinois waters and not certified, whether people did not realize they had caught a record or did not care.

And I guarantee bigger whitefish swim Illinois waters than Cruz’s.

Time to catch one.