After Gorashchenko, 25, of River North, and his friend Joshua Lee, 24, of South Loop, unraveled the mystery of what they had just pulled up, he posted the find<\/a> to the Reddit community r\/ChicagoFishing, where commenters congratulated him on his luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n But this catch also presents bigger mysteries \u2014 like what finding an eel in Chicago can tell us about the local ecosystem and how exactly this animal found its way to River North.<\/p>\n All American eels are born in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon after birth, they begin one of nature\u2019s great journeys, making their way miles and miles through the ocean and up into freshwater river systems, where they live out their adult lives. As they grow older, they transform from tiny, transparent larvae into sleek, slimy fish that can grow up to 4 feet long.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Historically, American eels have been found in rivers and streams across eastern North America. That includes the Mississippi River and its tributaries, such as the Illinois and Des Plaines rivers, said Phil Willink<\/a>, a fish biologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. The Chicago River wasn\u2019t continuously connected to the Mississippi River basin before the Illinois and Michigan Canal was built in the 19th century. But Willink said that eels would likely have had no problem shimmying through the muddy and often flooded Chicago Portage that spanned the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers before the canal was constructed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, American eels are found every so often in local rivers connected to the Mississippi. But thanks to dam-building, overfishing, pollution and other threats, American eels are much rarer throughout their range. Getting from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chicago River is also a little more complex than it used to be. Electric barriers, installed over the past few decades to stop invasive species like silver carp, prevent fish from moving between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see an eel around here, it swam 3,000 miles to get here, which is crazy, and past all kinds of barriers, locks and dams and all these types of things,\u201d Willink said. \u201cSo they\u2019re amazing creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n Given that, there are a few ways the eel Gorashchenko caught could have made it to Chicago. First, Willink said the fish-blocking barriers aren\u2019t exactly air-tight.<\/p>\n \u201cFish slip past, we know that; and now we\u2019re talking about eels that are masters at passing barriers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The eel could have come from another direction, swimming up the St. Lawrence River, into Lake Ontario, through the canal that bypasses Niagara Falls, into Lake Erie and Lake Huron and, finally, Lake Michigan.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a long haul, even for eels, but that is certainly possible,\u201d Willink said.\u00a0<\/p>\n If there is indeed a wild population of American eels here, that illustrates how Chicago\u2019s waters are eventually connected all the way to the ocean, said Austin Happel<\/a>, a biologist at the Shedd Aquarium.<\/p>\n But Happel also said the eel might not have made it here on its own. Maybe someone had a pet eel they released or maybe it was released as part of a religious ritual<\/a>, he said.<\/p>\n It may be impossible to definitively figure out this specific eel\u2019s origin story: After admiring the catch, Gorashchenko and Lee released it back into the river.<\/p>\n Yet researchers wonder if there might be more eels down there. Tristan Widloe, a biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, said that methods scientists typically use to sample local fish populations aren\u2019t great at finding eels, which tend to hide out near the sediment. Eels are also nocturnal, and sampling is typically done during the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n If anglers went out and found more eels, they might start to suspect there\u2019s a decently sized local population, Happel said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s just so much more to learn,\u201d Willink said. \u201cEven in a city with 3 million people, we don\u2019t know everything that\u2019s going on in our rivers and lakes.\u201d<\/p>\n Support Freedom of the Press<\/strong><\/p>\n Independent journalism like this only exists because of readers like you.<\/strong> This World Press Freedom Day, help Block Club raise $20,000<\/strong><\/a> to fuel high-impact investigations that hold Chicago\u2019s institutions and leaders accountable. Make your tax-deductible donation here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIVER NORTH \u2014 Last week, Ben Gorashchenko looked down into the Chicago River at the long, twisting, wriggling…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":796139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3425,1322,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-796138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116573732998586714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_2150-768x1024.jpeg\")
An American eel caught by Benjamin Gorashchenko while fishing the Chicago River in River North on May 4, 2026. He released the eel back into the river after taking this photo. Credit: Benjamin Gorashchenko<\/p>\n