Personal-best walleye: Trolling a Fish of the Week out of the fog

Mike Dudas with his personal-best walleye. | Provided

Mike Dudas caught his personal-best walleye (28 inches, “just shy of 10 pounds”) last week from the Chain O’Lakes.

“[I] caught it on the Fox Chain Thursday in the fog, three passes of trolling,” he messaged. “Also produced a 24 [-incher] before this one.”

That’s a good walleye, anywhere.

For some perspective on how big walleye may grow in Illinois, Jim Zimmerman caught the Illinois-record walleye (15.08 pounds, 31 1/2 inches) on March 11, 2012 from the Pecatonica River. Click here to read that story.

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. The online posting here at https://chicago.suntimes.com/outdoors goes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on the wide world of the outdoors.

Submit nominations by message on Facebook (Dale Bowman), on Twitter (@BowmanOutside) and Instagram (@BowmanOutside) or email (BowmanOutside@gmail.com).

Mike Dudas’ personal-best walleye measured.