The latest muskies on southern Lake Michigan

Zach Suchanuk had a good day going Saturday for smallmouth bass on Lake Michigan, then things got really interesting.

“I was outside of the Port [of Indiana] bass fishing on a really good spinner bait bite,” he said. “A muskie followed all the way to the side of the boat and ate [the spinner bait] right in front of me. It scared me. I just had my little bass net, so I fumbled it around a few times before I got it in the net.”

Suchanuk, a machinist at Burns Harbor who lives in Kouts, Ind., estimated it about 40 inches.

Weirdness continued 15 minutes later 100 yards away when he hooked into another muskie.

“It jumped all way out of the water and eventually broke the line,” he said. “It looked about the same size.”

Ben Dickinson, Indiana’s Lake Michigan biologist, messaged that there are usually one or two reports a year of muskies on Lake Michigan.

“I’ve heard of muskies in southern Lake Michigan, but I thought it was like a secret society,” Suchanuk said. “Then I run into two in the same day.”

And he finished third in the Cal-Sag’s Big Lake division bass tournament.

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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