I almost feel guilty for mentioning that the netting season for rainbow smelt in Chicago opens next Tuesday, as usual on April 1.
What was once a memorable night experience up and down the lakefront for generations — with a community history and buckets of the small, oily, invasive fish — has virtually disappeared. A small core group of hardcore netters keeps the tradition alive on the shores of Lake Michigan, despite the lake rarely even delivering a few smelt anymore.
Expect the same this year for the Chicago lakefront.
“Nothing new from our surveys last spring,” emailed Vic Santucci, Lake Michigan program manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “We will get the lakewide data [this week] at the Upper Lake Committee meetings. I don’t anticipate any major changes from the past years, but we’ll see.”
The Upper Lakes Meetings, a gathering of states, provinces and tribes, will be held through Friday in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Smelt season runs through April 30. Chicago Park District regulations are mostly the same; the key ones are that nets may go in at 7 p.m. and netters must be out of the parks by 1 a.m. Park staff have noted that gate work on the south side of Montrose Harbor means that lot will not be open or accessible for netting there.
License reminder
New fishing and hunting licenses are needed in Illinois beginning Tuesday. The new fishing licenses are also needed Tuesday in the other three states bordering Lake Michigan.
Heidecke opener
Also on Tuesday, Heidecke Lake, the former cooling lake near Morris, reopens to fishing with one regulation change. District fisheries biologist Seth Love dropped the 12- to 18-inch protected slot length limit on smallmouth bass because it didn’t seem to be helping their body condition, which remains “somewhat poor.” Heidecke smallmouth revert to the 15-inch minimum length with a three-fish daily limit.
Heidecke is one of Love’s favorite lakes
to manage.
“It has just about anything an angler could want to target,” he said.
He’s not kidding. You’ll find everything from crappie to walleye to bass to hybrid striped bass to muskie. Throw bluegill in if you know where they school up.
Love is most excited about the muskie fishing. In the spring survey last year, there was “a record high collection of muskie,” he wrote, “with 150 muskie collected in 30 net-nights of effort (comes out to five fish per net-night). We collected not one but two legal fish (48.9 and 49.1 inches).”
Average walleye length in the fall survey was 17 inches, with 79% being of legal size (16 inches), topped by one nearly 28 inches.
Wild things
For such small birds, tufted titmice make a lot of sound. . . . Heard my first wild turkeys calling before dawn over the weekend.
Morels
The first confirmed report of a morel mushroom in the Facebook group Illinois Morel Mushrooms came Thursday from Lawrence County. I think we’ll be into April before reports start around here and “Morel of the Week” begins again.
Illinois hunting
The first youth spring turkey season is this weekend.
Stray cast
The rude bison in that ubiquitous chicken wings commercial made me wonder when bison were extirpated in Illinois (about 1830). I wish the same fate on that commercial.