Stray Casts will intelligently report and observe, hopefully with a touch of wit, on daily occurrences, reports and releases related to Chicago-area outdoors from bucks to bass to birds to bugs
There was a lot of looking for big bass at Exelon Nuclear’s ``Fishing for a Cure'' bass tournament at Braidwood Lake on Saturday. And volunteer Jenna Hanson, 9, got an eyeful of the day's biggest largemouth bass before volunteer John Daniels released it.
South suburban brothers Jerry and John Luehrs won the seventh annual charity event.
Their three-fish limit weighed 8.15 pounds to earn them $4,000.
The day's big winner was the charity Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, which will receive more than $26,000 from the event.
If you're wondering, Jim Giglio and I only caught too much sun.
Marcus Miller, a 15-year-old Centralia High freshman, apparently caught an Illinois record crappie in Jefferson County.
Just which of the three crappies--white, black and hybrid--recognized by Illinois is Miller's 4-pound, 8.2-ounce fish will be determined by DNA testing. And that could be awhile, according to Rod Kloeckner'sstory in the Belleville News-Democrat. Thanks to Kloeckner for the photo.
When and if approved by the IDNR, Miller's crappie will likely be the third Illinois record fish caught in 2008. Most wonderfully, all three will have been caught by teenagers.
Miller caught his crappie while fishing the family farm pond between Centralia and Mount Vernon in mid-May. According to Kloeckner, Miller's grandfather Herman Rowcliff saved the fish from filleting and it was weighed on the certified scale at Dan's Meat Market in Centralia.
Miller would have all three Illinois crappie records beat.
The Illinois record black crappie (4-8) was caught by John Hampton in Rend Lake on May 15, 1976; the white crappie record (4-7) was caught by Kevin Dennis in a private pond in Morgan County on April 8, 1973; and the hybrid crappie record (2.8 pounds) was caught by Brett Larsen while ice fishing at Shabbona Lake in DeKalb County on March 9, 2007.
Brothers John and Andrew Chione both caught record redhorse suckers from the Fox River in late April. Those fish only need formal recognition from Springfield to be official. See their fish and story in an earlier post on Stray Casts.
John, 13, caught his 6.71-pound silver redhorse on April 24. Andrew, 15, caught his 3.74-pound shorthead redhorse the next day.
Why is an old photo of ``The Puppet Bar'' on Stray Casts?
It's a piece of history from the Fox Chain O'Lakes.
I was knocking around the Chain Sunday with Pat Harrison and his friend Jim Schaefer of JDSPINNERS Guide Service when Schaefer started talking about ``The Puppet Bar.''
His parents (George and Audrey) ran Eagle Point Park on Pistakee Lake in Fox Lake when he was a kid. He explored the Chain with an Arkansas Traveler with a 9.5 hp Evinrude.
The place was known as ``The Puppet Place'' or ``Puppet Bar'' into the mid-80s. In those days, there was dozens of places like that, now long gone for houses and condos.
I didn't remember it, but ``The Puppet Bar'' sounded fascinating. So the next day, Schaefer sent some extended memories:
``Yes, the Real name was Eagle Point Park but many nicknamed it ``The Puppet Place'' or bar.
There was a secret song on the juke and when people found it and it played, we would flip switches on a board behind the bar that would turn on over 60 hand made motorized puppets of all different sizes.
They would dance, jump and do what ever they were designed to. Some Puppets were made up like the four Beatles, Emit Kelly (the clown) and others.
A dancing rubber chicken that would drop from the ceiling and dance, pictures spinner on the wall, clocks would spin their hands as if time was flying etc.
When the song ended, we would shut them all down and some would slowly disappear behind hand made curtains or rise into the ceiling.
There was even a 6 foot tall human like Indian like a cigar store Indian and if you pulled his flap up a siren would go off.''
There's some strings of memories of the place on the message board of FunontheFox.com.
Then Schaefer went one better and e-mailed the photo: ``Dale you got me thinking and I dug through some old pictures. Here's one from the bar in the mid/late 60's. More puppets were added by the original owners before we bought it but this gives you some kind of idea what it looked like.''
A rare good Cook County walleye is Fish of the Week. The nearly 28-inch female was caught and released Friday evening by David Groch.
FOTW tops the Midwest Fishing Report each Wednesday in the Sun-Times. Photos and more extended stories are posted here.
For years, I have nearly laughed when the fisheries biologists at the Forest Preserve District of Cook County came back with tales of monster walleye (I'm talking 10-pound-plus) they netted in their spring gatherings.
Why? Almost no fishermen ever caught a walleye like that in a Cook County lake.
Well, here is Groch's story.
``My name is David Groch, I live in Elmhurst. I'm a union 134 out of work electrician.
I was fishing with my brother Jeff at Busse Woods Friday evening at 6:00 P.M. Using four pound test, ultra light rod with a night crawler when I hooked this female Walleye in about 3 ft, of water. Brought her in after a nice fight and took pictures, but did not weigh her because of stress, wanted to get her back in to the water as soon as possible.
She measured in length a little under 28 inches. Released her unharmed.
Also within three hours we caught largemouth, striped and rock bass and a couple of bluegill all with crawlers.''
After I responded, he sent a follow-up note: ``My brother Jeff caught a 25" walleye three days prior mine, same lake. Any chance this will be noted in the Times?? We sent Jeff's picture as well. Just wondering!''
Consider it done, if you consider this an extension or part of the Sun-Times.
Goslings and family relations on Wild Sunday May 25, 2008
A couple weeks ago Bob Nelson asked a goose question I've wondered about for several years. The Crystal Lake man wanted to know if Canada geese reshuffle their broods.
His question gave me the impetus to find the answers.
Here's at least four broods of geese packed together like a preschool for goslings on our town pond Saturday morning.
Nelson first e-mailed earlier this month:
``[W]hile walking the dog, I noticed 2 new Canada goose families on a small pond in the park behind my house. Each pair of adults had 3 very small babies. [The following morning] I noticed one pair had 5 babies and the other, one. [Two days later] all 6 babies were with one pair of the adults (3 other adult pairs were present, all without broods).
This pond is relatively isolated so I am sure that the families are not moving between different ponds. I have never heard of this reshuffling of broods before. Is this common?''
Apparently.
The first extended response came from Graham Smith, a west suburban man who hikes all over the area on a weekly basis.
He e-mailed:
``I have often seen expanding groups of goslings with a pair of geese after initial leaving of the nest. In some cases it seems like there is baby-sitting while parents are gone, but more often, the goslings seem to be abandoned by their parents and adopted by another pair.
This doesn't seem well understood, but I could guess from an evolution perspective that the parents that abandon their goslings have a better chance of surviving themselves and the adoptive parents real goslings have a better chance of survival in a larger flock of goslings. Maybe first time parents abandon their goslings to older experienced parents - just a guess.
A great book about goose behavior is The Geese of Beaver Bog by Bernd Heinrich.''
State waterfowl biologist Ray Marshalla knew ``that they form gang broods but didn't know if they go back and forth as described.''
So he asked a couple other biologists.
Marshalla e-mailed, ``Dan Holm said that reshuffling is very common among goslings, especially when they are less than 2 weeks old. As Roy mentioned below they also travel long distances from water and it could be other broods they are seeing as well.''
Marshall was referring to this from urban waterfowler project manager Roy Domazlicky:
``I have heard of reshuffling like this. Even though they are `sure' that other broods are not walking in it is very difficult to count that out because they will travel a lot with those broods. I believe the literature says up to 5 miles.''
Last week, Nelson sent an update:
``This morning a new brood on the pond with 4 very small goslings. At the other end of the pond, last week's group now has 7 babies with one noticeably smaller than the rest. Looks like we have a serial gosling-napping pair. I'm wondering if it is because the pond is small and the families are too close together.''
At its best, Fish of the Week is a fish of a lifetime.
Tracy Bridgford caught one of those last week on Sturgeon Bay. The 6-13 smallmouth is a FOTW for May 21, 2008. Her husband Allan sent three interesting photos and a good story, too.
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FOTW tops the Midwest Fishing Report in the Sun-Times each Wednesday. Here's the story for this week from Allan.
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``I'm an avid bass fisherman and my favorite place to fish is Sturgeon Bay. It's a haul from Oakbrook Terrace but as you know the smallmouth bass fishing is terrific.
My best smallmouth yet is 5 pounds 1 ounce.
Anyway, my wife Tracy and I made the trip to Sturgeon Bay earlier this week. She had never seen a smallie, much less caught one, so you can probably guess the rest of the story.
After about three hours on the water she hooked up with a monster: 6 pounds 13 ounces on my Rapala hand scale. She caught this beauty with a Nichols green pumpkin/gold flake tube in about 8 feet of water.
It was her first smallie ever and the fish-of-a-lifetime! I'm afraid I won't be able to top it. After a few pictures the fish was released in good shape.''
Illinois turkey hunters bag second highest spring harvest
Illinois turkey hunters bagged a reported 15,159 turkeys, the second highest spring harvest.
That preliminary statewide harvest trails only the 16,605 in 2006.
Last year the total was 14,766.
Hunters took 15,159 (compared to 14,196 in 2007) during the regular seasons, and an additional 633 (570) during the youth season. North Zone hunters accounted for 9,505 (8,641) birds; South Zone hunters took 6,287 (6,125), according to the IDNR.
Top 5 North Zone Counties: JoDaviess 568, Pike 552, Adams 507, Fulton 415, and Macoupin 399.
Top 5 South Zone Counties: Marion 347, Randolph 344, Pope 329, Wayne 303, and Jefferson 299.
Notable: The South Zone started out slowly in cool, rainy weather conditions, but improved over the course of the seasons and finished with its largest 5th season harvest ever. North Zone conditions were generally favorable, although cool weather and heavy rains on Sunday of the last weekend (5th season) dampened results slightly.
I expected to find my dad gimping around the little cabin we rented for a long weekend. Or maybe even thinking about bed by the time I rolled in late Thursday after a late hard drive in I-80.
Think again, the old man (he turns 80 this summer) was wired. He had a bear story.
We had rented a little cabin in the central Pennsylvania mountains for a final turkey hunt for him, and for playing on some of the greatest trout streams in world.
Because I was running late, he picked up the key for the cabin. As he turned up the drive, a big black bear ambled into camp. My dad got out to take pictures, but the bear hightailed it before he clicked.
Bears that learn not only to accept people but equate people with food become known as nuisance bears.
Of course, that is only because somewhere along the line, some idiot screwed up and taught bears (especially nuisance bears at camps) that people give food handouts.
Even so, I was envious. Even a camp bear is still a bear, and my encounters with wild black bears can still be counted on my two hands.
To top it off, on Friday night my younger brother and I did a long drive to find cell phone reception and look at deer, and, while we were gone, it got wilder.
Two small bears, my dad guessed yearlings, banged around the side of the cabin, then walked over to where the neighbors had a cooler on their porch. The neighbors ran inside and my dad shooed the bears away, though he said one of them wasn't in a hurry to hurry off.
There's the real trouble with nuisance bears: when they begin passing along the tradition to younger bears that people equal easy food.
To top things off, I was catching up tonight after being disconnected for four days and checked The Outdoor Pressroom as customary and found a woman had been mauled (a very rare occurrence for a black bear) by a bear just to our north, according to a story in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.
This is one of my dream fish, a 6-pound smallmouth from Lake Michigan. Congrats to Dennis Price III on catching and releasing this 20-inch smallie. it weighed 6-2 on his digital scale. It was Fish of the Week for May 14, 2008.
Here's the story from the 28-year-old carpenter from Tinley Park:
``After work on Monday May 5 , 2008, my brother and I took his boat out on Lake Michigan. This was my first time fishing for Smallmouth on Lake Michigan. We launched and fished just outside Pastrick Marina. I made a cast with my pumpkin colored plastic goby, dragging it along the bottom. As soon as I pulled my lure over a big rock the lunker hit. It was an intense and nerve wracking battle, because my brother forgot the net. I landed the big smallie and took some quick pictures. I then weighed it on my X Tools Digital scale and measured it. The lunker weighed 6 lb. 2 oz. and measured 20". I released the fish to fight again. That was truly the fish of a lifetime.''
Brothers John and Andrew Chione both caught record redhorse suckers from the Fox River in late April.
Here of the photos, much thanks to Mike Noland of Oswegoland Fishin' Fools. First is John, 13, with his 6.71-pound silver redhorse, caught April 24. Second is Andrew, 15, with his 3.74-pound shorthead redhorse caught the next day.
Here's the story from the May 14, 2008 Sun-Times.
Anything you can do ...; Teenage Chione brothers make history on back-to-back days
BY DALE BOWMAN
Taking sibling rivalry to another level, brothers John and Andrew
Chione caught Illinois-record redhorse suckers on back-to-back
days.
John, 13, caught the first, a 6.71-pound silver redhorse April 24
from the Fox River in Montgomery. Andrew, 15, caught a shorthead
redhorse of 3.74 pounds from the same area the next day.
It began when the home-schooled brothers from the western suburbs
were fishing for carp with corn early on April 24.
"I had a rod out with worms to see if I could catch catfish," John
said.
The bonus came in the form of a silver redhorse.
"We go through a lot of DNR magazines and remembered the record was
around 5 pounds," John said.
Jane Keenlance caught the standing silver redhorse record (5
pounds, 10 ounces) from the Fox on April 13, 2003. Fish records
generally are kept by weight.
The Chiones called Gander Mountain in Geneva and found they had to
get the fish weighed on a certified scale and witnessed, then have
it confirmed by a fisheries biologist and fill out the paperwork.
Bill Walsh, a retired teacher fishing with the brothers, helped
them get the fish weighed on a certified scale at Prisco's Fine
Foods in Aurora. Walsh and the butcher witnessed it.
Fisheries biologist Vic Santucci came out and confirmed the
25Ô/`-inch fish was a silver redhorse and explained the paperwork.
Ever the teacher, Walsh said: "I did a little homework. When they
spawn, they like to spawn around calm water and sand bars, like we
were fishing. When we put them in the cooler, they had eggs
spraying out of them. We happened to be sitting in a spawning
ground at the right time."
Oh, were they ever.
The next morning, Andrew pulled in his record shorthead redhorse.
"I had corn out for carp, and I had worms out for whatever would
bite on them," he said. "I knew it what it was. We caught the
species before. I knew what the record was."
Holly Trent caught the standing shorthead redhorse record (2-2.56)
from the Spoon River in Fulton County on March 22, 2003.
This time, the Chiones took the fish to the Jewel in Montgomery,
where the butcher and Walsh witnessed the weighing of the 21-inch
fish.
What I find most interesting is how sharp the brothers were. They
knew the species of redhorse (something I normally have to look up)
and that they were Illinois records. And I like that the brothers
and Walsh were back fishing when I called Saturday.
"I was down at Heidecke Lake helping a co-worker sample muskie and
was able to meet Andrew on Route 47 on my way back north," Santucci
e-mailed.
He said the paperwork was submitted. The records will be official
when Springfield officials sign off.
"When John caught that 6-11 redhorse, about a half-hour later,
Andrew caught one that weighed 5-12," Walsh said. "It would have
been a state record, too. I thought it was poetic justice he caught
a state record the next day."
Said Santucci: "When I originally got the call for the second
record, I couldn't help thinking how sibling rivalry hasn't changed
much since I was a kid competing with my brothers for everything
and anything."
Updated Wild Sunday (lakefront otters and eagle cam) 5-11-08
Is it an otter or a beaver?
John Vician, an experienced outdoorsman from the Northwest Side, sent this photo taken ``at the lakefront in 2006 at Henrys fall salmon derby.''
I've seen a good number of wild otters and beavers swimming in my life, but I can't say positively whether or not it is an otter, even after blowing up the photo. Vician originally labeled the photo a beaver, but had been rethinking that.
However, naturalist Joel Greenberg, author of A Natural History of the Chicago Region, did me a favor and looked at the photo. He said the head was too broad for an otter.
In late April David W. Ruiz reported an otter at Northly Island. They have been sighted in Chicago's rivers for several years, but lakefront reports have been sketchier. Now James Fernandez reported seeing one last year just south of the Museum of Science and Industry.
Eagle cams have been around for awhile. Illinois now has one at Coffeen Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area in Montgomery County. Just go to http://www.ameren.com. You can watch the bald eagle family daily between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily.
Because I am curious about stuff like lakefront otters I am trying to track any earlier reports for the lakefront. If you have one, please email me at outdoordb@sbcglobal.net.
Nearly everybody is old enough to remember when otters did not exist in Illinois. Reintroduction only began in 1994, and the current Illinois population is estimated greater than 10,000.
It's one of the amazing recoveries in the natural world.
Of course, the recovery of bald eagles has been even more stunning on a broader scale.
I'm old enough to remember when eagles were nearly wiped out in the 1960s. Now they're sighted on every river basin in the Chicago area and there's even several nesting pairs within the nine-county Chicago area.
Pasted below is the entire IDNR press release on the Coffeen Lake eagles.
Eagle Cam at Coffeen Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area
IDNR and Ameren team up to provide community with live pictures of bald eagle’s nest
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, IL – A recent discovery of a family of eagles nesting at Coffeen Lake State Fish and Wildlife area – near Ameren Energy Generating Company’s Coffeen Power Station – has prompted the installation of a live camera to monitor the nest and allow anyone with web access to watch the action.
This is the second straight year that the bald eagles have nested at the site. Last year, they successfully fledged two eaglets. This year, they are currently raising two eaglets that should fledge within the next few weeks.
The Coffeen Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area (SFWA) is home to a number of native wildlife species, including the nesting pair of bald eagles. The 3,145-acre site is located in Montgomery County, Illinois. The site is comprised of lands owned by the Ameren Energy Generating Company and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). The centerpiece of the site is the 1,100-acre cooling lake for the Ameren’s coal fired Coffeen Power Station.
A donation from Ameren provided for installation of an “eagle cam” to share the eagles’ nesting activity with the public. The eagle cam can be viewed daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. by visiting Ameren’s website at www.ameren.com and following the links to the live eagle cam.
Coffeen Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area is open to the public for hunting, fishing, picnicking and other activities. For more information on recreational activities at the site, contact the site office at 217-537-3351 or visit the IDNR web site at www.dnr.state.il.us
The first morel inspired me to look harder Wednesday afternoon. And my 6-year-old daughter and I found three of about three inches. It will make a good snack tomorrow.
Hunting morels should be a family tradition.
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This spot fits that perfectly. It was originally found by our oldest boy, now a sophomore, when he was in grade school. It's by a couple majestic elms, and feels spongy like a log once rotted there.
Some years it produces, others not.
I was beginning to think this was a no year. But with the rain today, my daughter and I took some extra time to look after school.
