POSTED: Saturday, August 16, 2008 -- 7:00pm

Winnebago County deputies say a body pulled from the Fox River this weekend appears to have been dead for "quite a while."

Emergency officials say a boater reported seeing the body Saturday about 4 p.m. Authorities retrieved the man's body a short time later.

Sheriff's Sgt. Jeff Gruss says the corpse was apparently in the water for a while, saying the drowning was not "fresh."

He says authorities are still trying to identify the man and determine a cause of death.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)