Really big walleye caught in downtown Chicago

“We were all in awe when we saw this thing come to the surface,” Brian Markham said Monday. “These are the waters of downtown Chicago.”

Markham was talking about the 26-inch walleye, weighing 8.1 pounds, that he caught and released Friday while fishing with Capt. Ryan Whitacre near DuSable Harbor.

“It was a giant,” Whitacre said Friday. ”When it surfaced, we were like, ‘(Expletive). I can’t believe it.’ ”

He said it’s the only walleye he’s seen in more than two decades of heavy fishing on Lake Michigan.

“Good to see – a big, healthy walleye,” Whitacre said.

“I’ve never caught a walleye that big,” Markham said. “We’ve caught some good ones in Canada, but not with that size and girth.”

It had been a rough day up to that point, with only a few smallmouth bass targeted with tubes and jigs.

”We were slow rolling tubes, looking for smallmouth,” Markham said as he fed his 17-month-old daughter breakfast. ”Sure enough, this thing hit and I said, ‘This is big.’ We saw the golden sides and our jaws dropped.”

Walleye are a very rare catch in the Chicago waters of Lake Michigan. Mike Osuch holds the unofficial record for Chicago bass, weighed on a certified scale (7 pounds, 5.5 ounces at Henry’s Sports and Bait) that he caught off the tip of Northerly Island in September 2008.

They ended up catching 10 smallmouth, walleye and a freakishly large freshwater drum Whitacre, estimated at 15 pounds.