No surprise, Darryl Turner, the south suburban man who has mastered catching big blue catfish at LaSalle Lake, has had a good start to the season. He caught a 31-pounder last Wednesday at the cooling lake south of Seneca.

“He smoked it,” he said. “I was standing next to the reel when it hit and [the reel] was screaming. It was awesome.”

He uses bluegill he catches there.

“Put the bluegill head on and they started slaying them,” he said.

He caught 17 blues the week before and seven on the first Saturday. LaSalle reopened March 15.

A buddy of Turner caught a 36-pounder. Those catches indicate show the recuperative powers of LaSalle, where a significant fish kill in 2020 hit big blues and hybrid striped bass hard.

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 chicago.suntimes.com/outdoorsgoes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on in the wide world of the outdoors.

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