Go perch fishing on Lake Michigan and catch a record burbot?
‘‘I’m as shocked as everyone else,’’ said Anthony Burke, who made his first burbot something special.
He was fishing for perch Saturday with his brother Matt in 60 feet of water northwest of Portage when he caught the Indiana-record burbot of 14.36 pounds.
‘‘Lo and behold, I got a nice fish,’’ he said this week.
‘‘Burbot are the only freshwater member of the cod family and one of only two freshwater fish species (along with northern pike) with a circumpolar distribution,’’ according to ifishillinois.org.
Even more delightfully, ifishillinois.org notes of their spawning: ‘‘They congregate to form writhing spawning masses of multiple male and female burbot simultaneously releasing sperm and eggs into the water column. They are also known to make a wide variety of vocalizations at spawning time.’’
Burke caught his on a homemade perch rig with 2-inch soft plastic on the bottom.
‘‘It fought for a while, but it didn’t feel like a salmon; kind of rolling around like a catfish,’’ he said. ‘‘As soon as it got to the boat, I knew I had something.’’
He weighed it at 14 pounds, 7 ounces at Sportsman’s Den in Cedar Lake, then reached out to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Lake Michigan fisheries biologist Ben Dickinson met him Sunday at the DNR offices in Michigan City, where the 37.25-inch burbot was certified and officially weighed.
Phillip Duracz caught the previous Indiana-record burbot (11.4 pounds) on Jan. 10, 2023.
Burke, 43, took his to be mounted at American Natural Resources in Griffith and saved the meat.
Asked how he celebrated, Burke said, ‘‘I cooked up the perch I caught and had a couple of beers.’’
Speaking of food, one of many nicknames for burbot is poor man’s lobster. Drew Geving has a basic recipe for poached burbot topped simply with melted butter, salt and pepper on roughfish.com, a site he founded with his brother in 2000.
‘‘Many of the freshwater cod’s nicknames can’t be mentioned, but here is a list of the most common: eel pout, lawyer, ling, cusk, lush, loche, mudblow and poor man’s lobster,’’ according to the Minnesota DNR.
There has been a string of record burbot in the last decade on southern Lake Michigan.
‘‘They like cool water and generally remain out deep,’’ Dickinson messaged. ‘‘But they spawn in late winter. So after the water cools off, they come in closer for shore feeding and also for spawning.
‘‘Probably not getting bigger so much as — with our recent mild winter weather — a lot more are getting caught, which ups the chances that a particularly large one will be caught.’’
Sean Konrad showed how big burbot can be with the world all-tackle record of 11.4 kilograms (25 pounds, 2 ounces), which he caught March 27, 2010, from Lake Diefenbaker in Saskatchewan, according to the International Game Fish Association.
‘‘On the burbot issue, my guess is that they come to shore in fall, winter and spring because the water temperatures are suitable (cold) and they are probably searching for a meal of fresh fish or crayfish,’’ emailed Vic Santucci, the Lake Michigan program manager for the Illinois DNR. ‘‘There are definitely big burbot in southern Lake Michigan, including Illinois and Indiana waters.
‘‘I just heard of a monster caught in Indiana, setting a new state record. As you know, it has been a few years since the Illinois record was broken, but I could see it happening again at any time.’’
Saro Kevorkian caught the Illinois-record burbot (11 pounds, 12œ ounces) on Dec. 7, 2020, at Diversey Harbor. He then released it into Montrose Harbor the next day after certification at Park Bait.
‘‘The biggest burbot we have caught in our surveys measured 35 inches long and weighed 12.5 pounds, which outweighs our current record by several ounces,’’ Santucci emailed. ‘‘‘There are bigger fish out there, as shown by the new Indiana record. It is just a matter of getting out on the water when weather conditions are not that great and putting a bait in front of a hungry fish looking for an easy meal.’’
The Illinois record for burbot has been broken several times in recent years, most famously at Montrose Harbor on March 22, 2017, when Ken Maggiore became the first person to catch two Illinois-record fish (whitefish and burbot) in one day.
It’s time for another burbot record on southern Lake Michigan.
