Finley Kristin, 10, caught the surprise of a bowfin over Father's Day weekend.
"I had my kids and cousins out this morning at Hammond Marina trying for smallmouth," John Kristin emailed.
They caught some smallmouth bass, then Finley hooked into what her father thought might be a snakehead. It's not, it's a bowfin, known commonly as a dogfish. Snakeheads, a highly injurious invasive, look similar to bowfin, a great ancient native fish.
"All in all, a great day doing what I love more than anything," John emailed.
The fish, which came on a live crawfish and 6-pound line, "weighed 8.57 [pounds] on a cheap scale."
Bowfin are tough fighters. Paul Huber caught the Indiana record bowfin (16 pounds, 8.3 ounces) from Mutton Creek in Jackson County in 2009. The Illinois record for bowfin is 16-6, shared by Charles Keller (Rend Lake, Sept. 23, 1984) and Dan Nugent (Bay Creek, Pope County, Sept. 14, 1992).
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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