Random challenges catch my attention, especially those related to big fish on the lakefront.
‘‘Fishing in Chicago has been a little slow this summer, so I have been making random challenges for myself,’’ Isaiah Jeong emailed. ‘‘I knew [northern] pike were around, so I threw some bigger spinner baits and crankbaits in bright chartreuse colors.’’
That thinking paid off for Jeong, a good follow on Instagram (sociologyofsmallies) and a graduate student in sociology at UIC doing work I find fascinating.
‘‘The first night I was targeting them, I lost a good one at the net, working around weed flats,’’ he emailed. ‘‘The second day, I landed a 30.5-incher on a spinner bait. And the third day, I landed a 33-incher. I really wanted to land a 30-inch pike three days in a row, but my luck ran out on the fourth day.
‘‘But last week, I hooked into my 30-incher working around rocky edges. This is my seventh pike this year, and the population is doing relatively well. All of the ones I have caught were well-fed and very fat.’’
Lake Michigan eventually will give up a pike big enough to top Illinois’ long-standing record: the 26-pound, 15-ounce pike caught by Walter Klenzak on Nov. 9, 1989, from what is now called Monster Lake in Kankakee County.
Pike, which are sight feeders, are improving on the lakefront, likely related to improved water quality and to the sharp improvement in water clarity the last couple of decades brought by invasive zebra and quagga mussels.
Bart Piet, who targets pike on the lakefront, doubled up on 37-inch pike Thursday on the Montrose Horseshoe.
‘‘I had a good-sized northern explode on a big bucktail at shore when I was doing the figure 8,’’ he emailed.
A figure 8 is a finishing technique (just like it sounds) for anglers targeting pike and muskie.
‘‘It got off, and I was a little bummed,’’ Piet emailed. ‘‘A few casts later on a large swimbait, another fish missed in the figure 8. This happened a few more times. About an hour later, I moved farther to a new spot and hooked into my first fish. About 15 minutes later, I had a small pike follow and miss at shore. Then a few casts later, the second one smoked my bait.’’
Jeong and Piet were targeting pike, but pike usually are incidental catches, such as Jason ‘‘Special One’’ Le texting Monday morning: ‘‘I was chasing king salmon and [had an] unexpected catch!’’
Caught incidentally or deliberately, pike spice up lakefront fishing.
Wild things
The whining of dog-day cicadas in the evenings seems particularly apt this week.
• Here’s to zinnias. I spotted my first painted-lady butterfly of the year Friday while working my wife’s zinnias and dahlias. . . . Bill Savage tweeted a black swallowtail working zinnias Sunday, then a different swallowtail doing the same Monday.
Illinois hunting
The first lottery for duck/goose permit applications (residents only) and applications for free upland-game permits run through Aug. 31.
Stray cast
Kyle Hendricks reminds me of a guy cane-pole fishing.
