Ice Fishing Tournament

This post is about fish, but mostly about catching them. By this time you have probably figured out that we are a fishy family...we love to eat it and catch it. So when the oppportunity came along to fish in this year's Jaycee Ice Fishing Tournament, we said "sure!" Kevin's mom had gotten us tickets at the Relay for Life Cancer Walk this summer so we figured they had to be lucky tickets because the money had gone to charity. Kevin's mom even volunteered to watch Miss Chocoholic for us because it was going to be a long day and Miss Chocoholic is not much for wanting to spend the whole day on the ice.

We got up early and had a big breakfast of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy. Kevin's friend, Jim, came over with his son and had breakfast with us. Then we bundled up and took the four-wheelers across the lake. We went early so that we could get a good spot. Kevin and Jim own a fishhouse together and it is on the same lake the tournament was on so we thought we could just hang out in the fishhouse after we got our spots.Company showed up at the fishouse soon after in the form of Kevin's friend, Jerry, who found the thermos of glugg right away.After we got out to the fishing tournament, the gun went off to signal the beginning. We were in sixty feet of water and I was struggling to get my line down the hole.Kevin came over to help me and as soon as he was done helping me, he went back to his own hole and his bobber was gone. He pulled up his line and had a .65 pound walleye! He raced it over to the weighing station hoping he would place somewhere. They give out prizes to the first 150 places in this tournament and the lowest prize is a $250 gift certificate. I had a nibble once and my bobber started going down but once I pulled up my line, there was nothing there. The rest of the three hours I visited with people and drank some glugg. Jerry drank most of it, though.Here is a picture of Kevin and Jim and below that is Jim's son and me.It is always amazing to see 15,000 people on a lake. We were more toward the edge of the crowd. After the tournament, we found out that Kevin's fish came in at the 81st place and he won a $250 gift certificate to Mill Fleet Farm! He was kind of bummed because if he would have been 80th, he would have won a four-wheeler. But he was excited that he had placed. He said he has been fishing this tournament many years and only caught a fish one other time and he never placed with that one. I talked him into buying himself a vexlar the next morning. How can a woman compete with a vexlar? I know it will probably replace me someday. It was a super fun day. The weather was great, it was up in the twenties and the sun came out in the afternoon. And the icing on the cake was that Kevin's fish placed! We invited everyone we knew out on the lake back to our house where we downed many Tombstone pizzas. I can't wait to do it again next year!