A bass angler fishing the southern finish of Lake Michigan landed a tank of a smallmouth bass Thursday that almost broke the Illinois document. Kyle Danhausen’s smallie weighed 7 kilos 2 ounces, only one ounce shy of the standing state record. He caught the fish within the coronary heart of Chicago — not removed from the place the Bears play.
“I prefer to fish that downtown space at any time when I can, and I used to be proper there [in the city]. I put in at Burnham Harbor, which is true subsequent to Soldier Area,” Danhausen tells Out of doors Life. “It’s cool to fish there, since you’re wanting on the skyscrapers, and the fishing is definitely actually good, too … The one factor is the wind — we get a number of small craft advisories. However the [bass] fishing may be unbelievable.”
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It definitely was that day, April 24, with air temps within the 80s and no wind to talk of. Danhausen, who works as a gross sales rep for Shimano and lives an hour south of town, says he was hooking bass on almost each solid that morning. Concentrating on small rock piles, he caught smallmouth on a 2.5-inch tube bait after which converted to a small swimbait. He says he had his forward-facing sonar on, however that it didn’t play a lot of a task as a result of the fish had been stacked up close to the underside and laborious to see on the display screen.
The chunk slowed by mid-morning, and Danhausen began working some deeper construction close by. He was fishing in round 20 toes of water when the large smallie hammered his swimbait. Danhausen felt the top shakes and he knew it was a superb fish, larger than the four- and five-pounders he’d reeled in that morning.
“It was humorous. A pair guys had been fishing close to me, they usually mentioned they knew instantly it was an enormous fish as a result of as quickly as I hooked it, I jumped into the center of the boat and bought my internet prepared,” Danhausen says. “I’d been hand-landing the remainder of my fish, however that one I actually needed to catch.”
Weighing the bass on his hand scale, Danhausen noticed it was simply over 7 kilos, after which he confirmed that weight on the neighboring boat’s scale. When he realized he was knocking on the door of a state document, Danhausen referred to as his pal Dale Bowman, who writes for the Chicago Solar Occasions, and who despatched him to a licensed scale at Bridgeport Bait and Tackle. Danhausen was additionally joined round that point by Jim O’Neil with Midwest Outdoors, who met him at a close-by boat ramp after listening to in regards to the potential state document in his livewell.
Danhausen referred to as a state fisheries biologist on his option to the bait store, simply to see if he ought to fizz the fish after pulling it up from 20 toes deep. (The biologist instructed him to not fear about it.) He says he was planning to launch the fish regardless, and he wasn’t all that excited by certifying a document initially. However he figured he may as effectively get affirmation on the bait store.
The fish, a feminine filled with eggs, measured 21 ¾ inches lengthy. It weighed 7 kilos, 2 ounces — simply an oz in need of the 7-pound 3-ounce state document that was caught and released from the Chicago shoreline in 2019.
With these measurements recorded, Danhausen and O’Neil ran again out into the lake and launched the trophy smallie. He says his fundamental concern was protecting the fish alive by way of the ordeal, and he was completely satisfied to see it swim off robust after reviving it for a number of minutes. In addition they caught round for one more 10 minutes to verify the bass didn’t resurface.
“I’ve gotten so many rattling calls about this fish, so lots of people have seen that Midwest Outdoor publish. And there’s been an unbelievable quantity of hate on there, which was stunning to me,” Danhausen explains. He says he’s been accused — principally by different anglers — of “molesting” fish for likes or consideration, whereas others claimed the bass should’ve died as a result of the discharge video ends earlier than the fish totally leaves his hand. “I by no means actually anticipated this notoriety … and I definitely wasn’t searching for glory or something like that. I simply thought it was a cool fish and I used to be glad to catch it.”
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Moreover, Danhausen is aware of there’s an excellent larger smallmouth bass within the Chicago space simply ready to smash the state document. He says that Lake Michigan as an entire, a few of the finest smallmouth habitat may be discovered proper there in downtown Chicago amid the breakwalls and harbors. And lately, he’s been catching increasingly large (five-plus-pound) smallies there.
“The Nice Lakes fishery on the whole is simply booming — the coho fishing is excellent, and the identical for perch and lake trout [on Lake Michigan],” Danhausen says. “Some old-timers may appropriate me, they’ll say it was actually good again within the 80s. However the smallmouth fishing down right here [around Chicago] has by no means been nearly as good as it’s now.”
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