Maybe this should change to fish-catcher of the week.
Robert Loerzel, great chronicler of lakefront and Chicago wildlife on social media, messaged on Bluesky, “I think you might enjoy my pictures of a red-breasted merganser catching a yellow perch in Montrose Harbor on Dec. 30.”
I found the close-up of the merganser’s serrated beak particularly striking.
Afterward, Loerzel messaged that the merganser “skedaddle[d] to dine alone away from other mergansers.”
From the series of photos, it looked like the merganser would have company for the perch dinner.
Fish of the Week, or Fish-Catcher of the Week in this case, the celebration of big fish and their stories (the stories matter as this one shows) around Chicago fishing, runs Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times.
To make submissions, email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), X (@BowmanOutside), Instagram (@BowmanOutside) or Bluesky (@BowmanOutside.bsky.social).