The Adventures of Valparaiso Gal: Perch Tourney

Good Morning!

I hope ya'all had a fun weekend. Troy and I ventured up north to visit with friends and Mom. Saturday morning, a little past 6AM, we headed off to a fishing tournament in Laporte, Indiana.

As you can tell, my truck had an inch or so of snow cover on it and snow was coming down in big, wet, flakes.

Highway 2 from Valparasio to Laporte only had one lane open in some sections due to the thick snow. It was rather slow going, but I made the usual 20 minute drive in about an hour. Luckily, I only had to get over and try to pass two other trucks at that hour.

Mike Sutton has a fishing club called Friends of Fishing. They hosted the Perchin4Polio tournament as a charity event to fund polio vaccines in other countries. I got lost on the way to the lodge. That is really odd for me since I am a native of Laporte County. However, the snow coverage made it hard to see my way around and distinguish the roads. I called Mike so he could guide me and got there just as the sky had lightened too, which made things better.

It's odd that I came across Mike's name the Sunday before this tourney that I fished with him.
I took it as a sign to head north despite the slick winter weather. I'm so glad I did. Mike and Garrett are two of the best ice fishing buddies a girl could have. A big thanks went to Garrett for being so kind; he insisted on helping me haul the shanty out and drilled all the holes. Mike was also very helpful in offering advice about where to fish. That's my shanty, in the middle of those other two, as seen from the bank of Stone Lake:

I was fishing in about 5 feet of water, with plenty of weeds, in that location.

The snow was rather deep to tromp though.

This is the view of the lodge from about halfway to my shanty:

And the view from the other direction:

Garrett allowed me to borrow his Vex. It's a device to help find where the fish are. All I can say is--I may never be able to ice fish without one from now on.

The young man in the shanty next to mine, Hunter, caught a pickerel on his tip-up. That poor minnow got pulled out of it's mouth and was still ready to swim.

Troy was inside the shanty jigging away, and I wasn't having much luck, so I went to fish a hole about 20 yards from the shanty. So, Mike and I are sitting there fishing and chatting when all of the sudden, Troy screams, "Fish ON!". He got himself a nice bluegill and that was awesome!

Troy was into this competition!

Garrett put him on some perch and Troy reeled em in.

At that point, I knew I needed to be farther out. The perch were in about 15 foot of water near the bottom. I abandoned the shanty and went after the fish.

As I was sitting there awaiting a bite, a feeling came over me of someone spying. Then Garrett exclaimed, "Is that a drone!", and indeed it was.

It seemed to hover down from a fairly high altitude.

After it hung out for minute it flew back over the treetops. I'd really like to know where it came from.

Troy had somehow managed to get his sock wet and he went back into the lodge. The lady, Dottie, inside told me he sat down in front of the fire and hung his sock up to dry. She thought he was clever for doing so and by the time I had came in he had a bunch of wet items drying.

We also got to ride snowmobiles while we were on the ice. Troy thought that was so much fun.

We fished for a bit longer and caught tiny perch. Troy put them in a bucket of water, in hopes to exchange for hefty fish.

We went inside the lodge and ate yummy chili for lunch.

The snow was really coming down after lunch. Mike, Garrett and I headed out to fish for more perch.

Troy also joined us. Hunter and his dad, Ryan, moved to fish the other side of the lake. Ryan came up to me and offered his perch catching spot. I took him up on it.

Ryan's spot was okay, but the perch really seemed to prefer getting caught by Garrett. Mike caught a keeper too, which he gave to me to clean, but was separate from the competition fish.

Again, Garrett helped me move my shanty and drilled holes in the new location.

Scott let us borrow his gas auger, which made for much faster drilling. The ice was over a foot thick.

In order to weigh perch in for the tourney, I believe the rules were that ya had to have ten. I kept swapping out small perch for slightly bigger ones. Also, I had a small perch on as my tip-up bait. The time flew by, and before I knew it, I had 30 minutes left before weigh-in time. Wouldn't ya know, during those last thirty minutes, I began to catch my nicest fish of the day!

This was the hot spot, which Garrett ordered me to fish from. I wasn't going to argue with him. :)

Me, making the most of the final 30 minutes-- it's serious now:

As time ticked down, I made it up to the lodge in time for the weigh-in.

Fish weigh-in's have always excited me. They are full of smiling people holding up fish.

Even though most of the perch were rather small, I weighed em in anyways. In a bucket full of snow in the truck, I had five perch that were given to me by Garrett, Mike, and Troy. Some of those were bigger than some of the ones I had caught.

After the weigh-in, I found a spot by the fire to park it and thaw out during the awards. Even though I had several layers on, including my snow overalls, the fire still felt really nice. I was shocked when Mike had announced I won third place for the longest perch!

Then he called out my name two more times. I had won a ninth place award for the weight of the 10 perch and a hoodie door prize. Troy also got some prizes to take home from the guys.

In the rush to get to the weigh-in on time, I had left all the gear behind. Troy made friends with snowmobiler, Rod, and he gave Troy a nice ride around the lake as I walked out to pack things up.

Troy told me that Rod let him drive. :)

Then it was my turn. I'd not ever been snowmobiling on a lake before. As we approached the 6" ice holes, they looked like huge puddles from my view. We skimmed right over em. even though it looked like we were headed straight for a dive. I got to steer a little too and was delighted in the heated handles. Rod, Troy, and I pulled my shanty with all the gear back to the truck with the snowmobile when we got done riding around.

On the way home from the tourney, I stopped at the store to pick up some cornbread mix to coat the perch. Troy was to excited to wait till we got home to tell everyone about his day, so he called em up.