NORTH BAY Sport and Liquor owner Joel Baranowski stands near the store’s leader board, which highlights the largest fish weighed at the Green Lake store. Aaron Becker photo
20-plus years ago, this Green Lake bait shop hung up a leader board of fish tales. And they’re still growing.
by Aaron Becker
aaronb@riponprinters.com
No doubt about it, there are record fish in Big Green.
But, with pun intended, there’s a catch. Laying claim to one of those coveted records may be up for debate, depending on who you ask.
Either way, they all make for good stories.
And the owner of North Bay Sport & Liquor in downtown Green Lake has heard almost everything. Not only does Joel Baranowski see anglers enter his shop every day — his job requires him to shoot the breeze about what’s biting -— but he’s got something unique:
A leader board.
It’s a small, framed placard hanging near the live minnow tanks. This is written proof of some of the luckiest fishermen around, featuring the dozen or so game fish common in the state’s deepest lake, and the person who caught the biggest one. Basically, it’s a list of records.
But … it’s just the fish that have been caught on Big Green and weighed at North Bay. That means they’re unofficial records.
Store records, as it were. And that’s exactly what makes them interesting.
Baranowski acknowledges the board encompasses just the modern time — about the past quarter-century.
“I think I put that up in 1987, when we moved down here from the other store,” he said. “Before that, there definitely were fish caught [that would have been bigger]. I remember a 27-pound northern that we weighed years before that.”
North Bay’s current northern record is 23.9 pounds.
He remembers several fish through the years that were either caught before the board went up, or caught but never brought in to be weighed. So, lucky fishermen may have broken the North Bay record here or there, but they’ll never be recognized.
Unfortunate? Perhaps, but the board is mostly for yucks.
“It’s just kind of a fun thing to do … People are curious,” Baranowski said.
He remembers every fish’s story up on that board.
“That Deitz one [who held the lake trout record until last month] was caught through the ice. And that stayed up there a long time [since 1992],” he said. “That cisco, Arlin Bloch caught that off of Sugar Loaf through the ice. I remember that fish, and that’s a big cisco. That’s going to be a tough one to beat. The northern was an ice fishing one. I remember that on the west end.”
And he can go on.
“That bluegill is going to be tough to beat,” Baranowski said. “One-point-six [pounds] is a big bluegill. The state record for a long time was only two, and now someone broke that up by Green Bay.”
He admits he’s somewhat surprised by the store’s walleye record. It’s the longest-running listing on the board, set in 1988 at 12.3 pounds.
That particular fish was caught in July, so it was lighter than it could have been.
“I know there’s been bigger walleyes caught, but that walleye was a summer fish when they don’t have a lot of weight on,” he said. “You catch that fish in the fall, and … it would weigh two or three pounds more.”
One record just itching to be broken is the perch, because it’s never even been set. Right now, it’s a blank space.
“We never put a perch up there because no one ever brought one in over a pound, and we said, ‘Let’s start at a pound,’” Baranowski said. “But now with the big minnow influx in the lake, which is forage for the perch, you’ll start seeing bigger perch out here.”
Baranowski believes the lake’s minnow base has been growing in recent years, likely due in part to the inlet — a weedy, warmer spawning habitat.
“It’s like a giant nursery back there now,” he said. “You have 400 acres back there pumping little bluegills, minnows, panfish into the lake, because they go back there and they’re protected. It’s like a big forest.”
More minnows means more food for predator fish.
“The old timers talk about three-pound white bass, and I had never seen a three-pound white bass,” Baranowski said, but added that last year, he weighed a number of white bass that were around 2.5 pounds “because they have such a good forage base now. They’re getting bigger.
“Two pounds was a nice one, and now you’re starting to see these bigger fish — which there were stories of back in the ’60s that they had three-pound white bass out here. I never believed it, until now I’m seeing why. They had a minnow base back then, and those fish grew.”
Another factor that influences the leader board is the increased popularity of catch-and-release, which Baranowski says has become the dominant method among anglers.
Fishermen don’t keep their catch like they used to.
“For sure,” he said. “I think guys understand that, if you’ve got a six-pound smallmouth, that fish is 12 to 16 years old. If you’re going to take that home and kill it, it doesn’t get replaced right away … That 12-pound walleye probably was 16 years old. But you’re seeing more and more [anglers] letting fish go. It’s much, much more popular now.
“With the catch-and-release, I don’t see a lot of fish that probably could be [a new store record],” he said.
On the wall next to the leader board are several mounted fish trophies, although these don’t correspond to the listings on the board. But some come with fascinating stories.
For example, the gigantic, stuffed northern pike wasn’t even caught. It was found.
“That floated up dead on Labor Day [near the Heidel Bar] about, I want to say, about eight or nine years ago,” Baranowski said. “And that would be the biggest northern [on the leader board] if it had been caught. A guy picked it up dead and brought it in. And it’s 50 inches long, which is unheard of around here for northerns. My scale wasn’t big enough to weigh it … That fish was pushing 30 pounds. Who knows, it probably could have died of old age.”
As monstrous as it is, that northern still would have been fatter over the winter.
“That was a summer fish,” Baranowski said. “If that had been caught through the ice, there’s a possibility that could have pushed the state record. You do not hear about 50-inch northerns.”
Another interesting mount is the yellow bass, “which aren’t common out here,” he said. “That’s the only one I’ve ever seen in my life out of this lake.”
As for Baranowski’s leader board, the latest record to fall is the lake trout. In June, Green Lake’s Jan Brzozowski’s caught one weighing 28.09, breaking the previous record held by James Deitz, who caught a 26.2-pound laker in winter 1992.
Brzozowski caught his fish with guide Mike Norton and friend Steve Siders.
“They were excited,” Baranowski said. “They’re going to mount it … In modern time, that’s the biggest lake trout I’ve seen.”
Before that, the last store record to fall took place late last year, when Michael Rourke reeled in a feisty, 6.51-pound smallmouth.
This set a store record by less than one-tenth of a pound.
Even with all of Baranowski’s fishing experience, he’s not listed anywhere. The leader board is just for customers.
“There’s a number of them that I would never have beaten,” he said. “Those are all pretty substantial fish.”
The Green Laker 