05/23: Fish of the Week
BY DALE BOWMAN outdoordb@sbcglobal.net May 22, 2012 10:42PM
Updated: July 2, 2012 10:01AM
Joe Collette of Hoffman Estates made a couple of casts at Independence Grove with a classic spring bass lure, a black-and-blue jig, then hooked up. But it was a muskie, not a bass.
‘‘He came out of the water, it was like a tarpon,’’ Collette said. ‘‘He came out four or five times.’’
He had no net and was
using 10-pound
monofilament.
‘‘I got it up to shore,’’ he said. ‘‘I couldn’t believe it. I was really shook up and happy. All my years of muskie
fishing, it was so sweet because it was
unexpected. If the jig wasn’t in the corner of his mouth, I would never have caught it.’’
Collette has fished muskie for 30 years, from Canada and back, and has a reproduction of a 52.5-inch muskie he caught from Lac Vieux
Desert in Wisconsin in 1999 on his wall.
But to catch a 47-inch muskie while bass fishing for the first time with a group on an April outing at a forest preserve lake in Lake County is unique.
