Ken Bermingham Siri-ously needed a bigger net Friday.
He had hooked a monster northern pike at Cal Park while casting a Shad Rap on 8-pound monofilament.
He tried to get the attention of his wife Jennifer.
“She was sitting in the car playing her game and I started screaming for the net,” Bermingham said.
When she couldn’t hear, he managed to get his cell phone.
“Hey Siri, `Call my wife,’ “ Bermingham said. “I said, `Get the net.’ But the net wasn’t doing nothing.
“I couldn’t get the tail in the net, so I had to gill him. I pulled him out and couldn’t believe there was more of him. I had never caught a northern pike out of Lake Michigan.”
To gill it, the Lansing man, who grew up down the block from Cal Park, had to lay on the platform.
Premonition had paid off.
“I had a feeling, so I took off work to go fishing,” Bermingham said. “Third cast I caught it. I had the feeling.”
He did not get it measured, but estimated it at 48 inches. He’s 6-1.
“I was just wanting to get her back in the water,” he said. “Love to see a kid come and catch this thing.”
It looks in the class of the Illinois record (26 pounds, 15 ounces), caught by Walter Klenzak from a Kankakee County strip pit, now called Monster Lake.
FOTW, 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.
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