saturday ice contest report

[Chrisper4694]

had 2 of my buddies that don't get to fish too often and my father-in-law and we hit up a private lake contest (shawnee) saturday. I got bumped from the previous contest from 1st place half the day, to 2nd and then 3rd right out of the money in the last couple of hours so we wanted to clean up this time! We set up shop and got to work...had to constantly check the open holes (the covered ones were pretty much ok, but even those got smaller as the day went on it was so cold! my pinky fingers still hurt today, i guess they got a little minor frostbite AGAIN haha.

Anyway we had a pretty good day, I changed my usual tactics and went with primarily big baits. after setting one of the biggest shiners down, before i could set the next tip up it went off. I doubled back, picked it up, slipped the circle hook in and started working a pretty heavy fish to the hole. as soon as i saw the head i knew it could be a money fish so i lipped that sucker like a boss haha. filled my 'tub' with water and brought him over for weigh-in. 3lbs 11oz! held first place for most of the day but i got bumped to second by a 4lbs 3oz pickerel all good though, i held on to second place for some prize money!

Better yet my friends and father-in-law caught plenty of nice fish too so everyone had a great day and the prize money covered our bait and all our entry fees, plus some. my buddy's first skillful angler sized fish (15.5" bullhead) plus a nice bass and a bunch of pickerels up to 22" and another 3lbs 1oz bass for my father-in-law.