He knows the feeling
Miller’s recent sauger brings back memories for Van Meenen
Any conversation that winds its way to the late Dominic ‘‘Big Knobs’’ Culjan is a good one. Dennis Van Meenen ended up there Thursday while talking about his former line-class, world-record sauger.
Van Meenen read with more interest than most about the big sauger Joe Miller caught March 28 from the Peru flats of the Illinois River. Many of us, including Van Meenen, think Miller beat the Illinois record but didn’t get it weighed quickly enough.
Miller’s sauger weighed 5.4 pounds on a certified scale at a Jewel in Palatine six days after being caught. That was about 6 ounces short of the Illinois record, a 5-pound, 12.5-ounce sauger caught by Bill Rolando on July 30, 1967, from the Mississippi River in Jo Daviess County.
That also meant that Van Meenen’s 5-pound, 7-ounce sauger, caught March 22, 1986, remains the biggest sauger caught from the Illinois River. Still, Van Meenen readily said: ‘‘I do think [Miller’s] was a little better than mine.’’
Van Meenen’s was 24 inches long; Miller’s was 24 inches. Both fish were caught on the Peru flats deeper than the spot usually is fished. Miller caught his in 18 to 19 feet; Van Meenen caught his ‘‘right down in the middle of the channel.’’
Van Meenen caught his on a Wolf River rig with a Phelps floater jig and a minnow. ‘‘I knew what I had,’’ he said. So he had it weighed on a certified scale at the former Jeff ’s Grocery in Atkinson.
‘‘When I got that 5-pounder, ‘Big Knobs’ had his bait shop on the main street in Utica,’’ Van Meenen said.
Culjan was a classic Illinois River character. He was offering $100 to anybody who caught a 5-pound sauger. He paid Van Meenen, then asked if he could keep the fish in the shop for a few days.
‘‘Anybody who stopped in could see it,’’ Van Meenen said.
The International Game Fish Association, the keeper of fishing records, gave Van Meenen’s sauger the line-class world record for 8-pound line. He caught it on 6-pound line, but there was no class for that line. The record stood for several years.
Van Meenen, a retired teacher, teamed with his brother Jim and fished the first 17 years of the Masters Walleye Circuit tournament out of Spring Valley. The MWC began the spring after he caught his big sauger.
He still holds the record for the biggest walleye (7.25 pounds) caught in the MWC event on the Illinois River. That fish helped them win the MWC in 1994 with 41.5 pounds, still the secondhighest winning weight.
Van Meenen, who considers himself a multispecies fisherman, said the walleye was caught in a nondescript area west (downstream) of the Peru flats.
‘‘We used to always jig-fish,’’ he said. ‘‘Over the years, trolling has become prevalent.’’
One of the shifts in the history of the Illinois River.