Sarley: Mounting a decision on when and how to keep a trophy fish

We all dream about catching that trophy fish of a lifetime, don’t we? What are you going to do to memorialize that special catch if you are lucky enough to land that monster?

I have thoughts in mind for how big a fish would have to be in order for me to take it to the taxidermist. Unfortunately, I have never caught a fish large enough for me to have mounted. Of course, my wife has a rule that if I mount a fish, I am more than happy to hang it in my garage. I guess that means no mounts for me.

For most folks, the most common thing to do would be to have a good old-fashioned skin mount made by a good taxidermist. Northern Illinois is lucky to be the home to Doug Petrousek of Douglas Taxidermy in Elburn. Check Petrousek out on Facebook.

I think Petrousek is the best in the entire country. It really says something when you do work for Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, doesn’t it? That’s like being the guy who tunes up Mario Andretti’s car.

There are differing schools of thought on fish mounting. Petrousek is a firm believer in mounting the actual fish you have caught. Petrousek figures that any fish huge enough to mount does not need to be released. He feels that really large fish are past the point of being reproductive. He has a point.

My buddy Jim Tostrud of Lake Geneva has totally given up on skin mounts. He only does fiberglass reproductions. Two fish artists and two different opinions.

The big decision is whether or not to have a fish mounted or to throw it back in the lake to do battle another day. That’s a tough call and you aren’t going to get an opinion from me. Arguments and fistfights get caused by this question. I say that if it is a legal fish, caught in season and it meets the legal requirements for keeping it, it is yours to do with what you like.

Earlier this month a Minnesota teenager, Luke Mulholland, nearly broke the state record for largemouth bass. He plans to have the 8-pound, 10-ounce fish mounted. It is a great fish and Mulholland did a tremendous job in landing it.

That said, social media blew up with people wanting to string the young man up for keeping his fish. He started out so proud and was then made to feel like a criminal all because of a fish. I don’t get it.

How does a person decide when to keep a trophy? Keep in mind that it is an expensive proposition, so if you catch a bigger fish later, are you going to spend the money for another mount?

I met a couple of fishermen who had fish mounted that I could not understand initially. The first guy was our warehouse manager at my work. He showed me a largemouth bass mount that probably weighed no more than 3¼ pounds. That’s a nice fish but nothing special.

I asked him why he mounted it and he told me he caught it out of the Humboldt Park Lagoon on the west side of Chicago. He said that no one he talked to had ever heard of a bass that big from that body of water. I couldn’t argue with him.

Another guy I know showed me a wooded plaque that had a gar mounted and attached to it. He said he didn’t know what the fish was when he caught it. He went into the bar on the shore of Loon Lake, near the Chain, and asked the regulars if they could identify it. The old-timers told him that it was a gar and nobody had caught one in over 20 years from Loon Lake.

The locals started buying the guy rounds of shots and beers to celebrate his catch. He drove straight to a taxidermist from the lake. I believe that this was the first gar I had ever heard of being mounted. To each his own.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.