By Sandy Vasko

Catfish Days in Wilmington will soon be upon us. July 23 – 26 will be a time when many a catfish will meet a delicious end. I hope you will be able to get your fill.

A festival revolving around a fish may seem a bit strange to folks from the city, but Wilmington’s reputation for fishing is no recent thing, and people have been fishing the Kankakee near that spot for thousands of years.

It was considered a poor man’s sport, perhaps because the object was food. But in the first decade of the 20^th century, hunting and fishing became acceptable, not just for the poor class, but also for the rich. Maybe it was due to a guy named Teddy.

As early as 1886, game wardens were concerned about the fish in the Kankakee. We read in the Wilmington Advocate on August 20, 1886: “State Fish Commissioner Bartlett on Tuesday at Kankakee took legal steps to compel fish ladders to be placed in dams at Waldron and Kankakee. He will take similar action to ladder dams at Wilmington and Marseilles, thus opening fishways from the sources to the mouth of the Kankakee River. He will stock the river next week with bass, carp, salmon, pickerel, and catfish.”

Many of you are asking, “Why in the world would he actually stock carp in the river? Actually, many ethnic groups enjoy eating carp, and with all the immigrants in this area, it probably seemed like the right thing to do.

However, we do know that by 1904, carp were no longer considered a game fish as we read: “The Aurora Bait Casting club is planning to rid Fox River of carp between Oswego and Yorkville, and an effort will be made to interest anglers between Aurora and Elgin. The Aurora Bait Casting Club has ordered a seine five hundred feet in length. A large shipment of black bass and walleyed pike is about to be set free in the river.”

It was also in that year that we read about a new sportsmen’s club whose roster read like a who’s who in Will County politics: “The annual meeting of the Jerome Hunting and Fishing club, of which Sheriff Ray, Senator Barr, H. F. Piepenbrink and Congressman Snapp are prominent Will County members, was held at the Sheriff’s office Monday evening. It was voted to increase the membership from thirty ($1,093 today) to forty ($1,458) and to take in ten new members at $100 ($36,437) initiation fee each.

“After the business meeting, the club members, including well-known anglers and hunters from Chicago, Braidwood and Wilmington, as well as Joliet, enjoyed a big banquet at Hobbs’. Sheriff Ray acted as toastmaster, and all the speakers maintained their reputations in the spinning of fish yarns. Wilmington was represented by Geo. F. Scheibner, Henry Allott, Wm. Powers, T. J. Donahoe and Jerry Lacey.”

And it wasn’t just fishing; hunting also became popular for the “in” group. Rich guys, influential guys, politicians and any one who wanted to hobnob with them bought a gun and went hunting.

I believe that President Theodore Roosevelt had a lot to do with the change in attitude toward the great outdoors. Roosevelt became President in 1901, but even before that, he was in the news as the man who charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba.

He was rich, he was influential, he was a “man’s man,” and when he said that hunting and fishing were “bully sports” the fad was on.

Soon, private hunting and fishing clubs were popping up all over our area. Land that was too poor for cultivation, or too wooded was being snapped up, fenced off and privately owned. The average guy from town soon was hard pressed to find a place to hunt.

And if he did venture on to private land, he would soon be caught and fined for trespassing. We read in March of 1905: “At a meeting of the Goose Lake Hunting club held in Joliet last week, the Club voted in favor employing a game warden, who will have stringent orders to protect the interests of the Club.”

The Wilmington area gained a good reputation for hunting and in December of 1909 we read: “Bryon (Ban) Johnson, president of the American Baseball League, Charles A. Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox baseball club and Peter Hamler came to this city on the 10:37 Alton train from Chicago Tuesday morning for a day’s rabbit hunt.
“The gentlemen were the guests of J. H. Ray, M. J. Donahoe and W.A. Powers, and were taken in tow by the Wilmingtonians who piloted them to the George Gooding and Goodwin farms in Wesley, where the party bagged 80 or more cottontails. The Chicago gentlemen with their game returned on the evening train to the windy city. They were so well pleased with their day’s sports that they intend making another visit to our city shortly.”

Sandy Vasko is Researcher and Collections Manager for the Will County Historical Museum and Research Center in Lockport, Illinois.

A photo of a typical early 1900’s hunting party