Prize Pickerel

To boost circulation, the Chicago Evening American two months ago thought up a novel idea. Into a string of northern Illinois and Wisconsin lakes, favorite haunts for Chicago fishermen, the American put 1,000 fine fish, tagged for identification, offered prizes from $1 up for their capture. Biggest prizes were $500 and $200 for two pickerel inevitably named Oscar and Fanny. Local sporting-goods stores put up additional prizes, raising the reward for Oscar to $1,330.90, the reward for Fanny, to $820.90. The lakes, theretofore comparatively quiet retreats, swarmed with so many visitors trying to catch Fanny or Oscar that the scene resembled a regatta.

Last week, after about 50 of the smaller-prize fish had been caught, the honor of catching the first-prize pickerel fell to an assiduous young angler named John D. Mueller. A Bell Telephone Co. employe who owns a cottage on Lake Pistakee and has used it as a fishing camp for several years, Mueller had almost decided to fish elsewhere because of the crowds that made casting difficult, when he and his brother Charles went out one evening to try their luck once more. When, after they had caught several bass, John reeled in a fine fat pickerel, neither experienced fisherman bothered to inspect it closely. After lunch next day Charles Mueller took their catch down to the lake to clean them, lifted the pickerel out of the basket first. The fish slipped out of his hand into the shallow water. When, after groping for several seconds, Charles Mueller took it out of the water the second time he finally noticed the tag that identified it as Oscar.

Caught three miles from where it had been released, Oscar's weight had shrunk from seven to five pounds. Said John Mueller, who planned to use his prize money as the down payment on a house: "My heart almost stops when I think back, not"to the moment of catching him, . . . but to the moment that Charlie dropped him in the water and recovered him like an outfielder coming up with a liner at his shoe-tops."

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