PORTAGE, Ind. – Some fishing records seem to be etched in stone, never to be replaced.
When Roy Landsberger landed a 13.13-pound largemouth bass from an Ohio farm pond in May of 1976, he set a mark that has been unchallenged for nearly a half-century.
The state record rock bass, a 1.97-pound fish caught in Deer Creek, has held its place on the list of record fish for more than 90 years.
The burbot record in Indiana was beginning to seem like it might be untouchable, as well, standing rock solid for more than 30 years since Larry Malicki caught a 7 pound, 11 ounce fish in 1990. But then the burbot record was shattered, not broken, and it happened three times in less than two weeks.
On Dec. 30, Scott Skafar caught a 9 pound, 8 ounce burbot in the Indiana waters of Lake Michigan, and on the same trip Skafar landed a burbot weighing 10 pounds, 2 ounces. But before the ink was dry on Skafar's record fish, on Jan. 10 Phil Duracz brought in a burbot that weighed 11.4 pounds on an official scale, smashing the fresh record by more than a pound.
Duracz, who was back out on Lake Michigan on Tuesday night when he spoke to The Blade, had a 10 pound, 9 ounce burbot in the cooler, and another one that cleared 10 pounds. There are a lot of big fish out there, he said, and Duracz is not sure he will hold the Indiana record for long.
“My record could be broken any day or anytime now,” the 39-year-old railroad worker said. “There's no ice yet, and if the lake is fairly calm, a few fishermen will be out here so somebody could break that record. We're catching a lot of big burbot this winter.”
Burbot are the only freshwater member of the cod family and are also known as eelpout, lawyer fish, and freshwater cod. Burbot are found throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, including all across the Great Lakes basin. Since they prefer cooler water, burbot in Lake Erie will spend the summers in the deeper eastern basin before migrating to river mouth areas in the colder months. They are rarely caught in the western end of the lake.
Burbot spawn in the winter when they are often found closer to shore feeding on a variety of small fish.
The Ohio record burbot is a 17.33-pound fish caught in Lake Erie in 1999, while the Michigan record, an 18.25-pound burbot, came from Munuscong Bay of the St. Marys River in the eastern Upper Peninsula nearly 25 years ago.
Travis Hartman, Lake Erie Program Administrator for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, said commercial fishermen will trap net a few burbot off Ohio's northeastern shore of Lake Erie while targeting yellow perch, but the annual burbot harvest is less than 300 pounds.
“Like most cold water species (lake whitefish, lake trout, and cisco) in Lake Erie, there is concern about the amount of suitable habitat with the impacts of increasing water temperatures and the extent of central basin hypoxia (low oxygen levels),” Hartman said. “Additionally, with the continued success of lake trout rehabilitation, there could be competitive interactions that are limiting burbot.”
Hartman said burbot hatches on Lake Erie vary greatly from year to year, and although there is not a significant amount of data on the species, he expects to learn more about their seasonal movement and preferred habitat since some burbot in the eastern basin have been outfitted with acoustic tags.
Lake Erie burbot feed primarily on rainbow smelt and the invasive round goby. Duracz said the Lake Michigan burbot he targets also prey on round gobies, a bottom dweller.
“We're fishing within a couple of feet of the bottom, so they're down there feeding on gobies right now,” he said. Duracz was fishing in 45 feet of water when he tied into the record burbot while using a jerk minnow bait. The fish weighed 11 pounds, 7 ounces on his scale at the time, but since it was at night he had to wait until the next morning to go to an Indiana Department of Natural Resources office and the fish lost a bit of weight overnight.
“We caught five or six lake trout that night, and maybe another six burbot,” said Duracz, who also holds the Indiana whitefish record with a 9.34 pounder he caught in Lake Michigan in 2021.
“I guess I'm a fishing junkie,” said Duracz, who lives in Chesterton just minutes from Lake Michigan. “I'm the only boat out here right now in the Indiana portion of the lake, but if we get a calm night with a nice moon, I want to spend a few hours after dark out here fishing.”
Duracz said he attributes the repeated assaults on the burbot state record to the fish adapting to feeding on gobies closer to shore, and the fact there is very little fishing pressure in the winter months, the only time when burbot are in the shallower nearshore waters and easier to locate.
“Although it is slowly growing, this winter fishing thing and how good it is has been kind of a secret,” he said. “There's pretty much only a handful of guys who do this from November to April.”
Ben Dickinson, Indiana’s Lake Michigan fisheries biologist, said an overall mild start to winter accompanied by a period of light winds has opened up the lake at a time when the conditions usually are much less hospitable.
“We've had many low wind days that have allowed anglers to boat fish on Lake Michigan in December and January, which is unusual,” Dickinson said, adding that the buzz over the run on the records will likely have an impact, as well.
“My speculation is that (the record being broken several times) is mostly about increased angler pressure on the lake. Typically anglers are targeting lake trout and/or whitefish, and catching the occasional burbot as bycatch. With the news of the first record going viral, there was even more interest among the diehard winter angling community and I think a few more people have burbot on their radar now.”
First Published January 28, 2023, 9:13 p.m.
