Wawasee Tourney

HELLO! Well, Hi There Everyone!  I know it's been awhile since I last posted anything.  I've been busy having fun!

Friday morning I went to Syracuse, Indiana to fish and visit my friend, Rich.  The Syracuse area is speckled with Amish farms.  As I was admiring the countryside during the drive, big ole slushie snow flakes fell from the sky.

I picked up Rich, and we went to check out some ice fishing gear at Gaffight.

 
A pretty pink rod (in the middle of the display), caught my eye.  So did the green one, a purple one, an orange one, a rod that resembled a leopard print...  oh, and the yellow swirls, the black/purple ombre... I checked them all out.

Then I heard Snoring! ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz  I glanced over at Rich sleeping and thought, perhaps it was time to make a decision.  :)

Rich got to take a long nap, cause after I made the tough choice of picking out a rod, the jigs caught my eye. :)

Eenny Meeny Minny Moe...this one, that one, some that look like a toad!  :)

Mr. Gaff was a pleasure to talk with.  He fixed up the broken eye on my ice rod and taped a reel on the new rod.

I inquired about his recent ice fishing adventures.  Sadly, baseball injuries cut his professional pitching career short, and resulted in him having a hard time when it comes to getting out on the ice.  He gave me his card; I insisted he autograph it.

Friday night I checked out Lake Wawasee and got a game plan in place for the tourney on Saturday.  

The ice was plenty thick to drive on, however, the public access point was humpy-- that is to say I was concerned about bottoming out my Trailblazer.  Friday, I parked at Rich's friends house, which happened to be close to the good spot. :)

 Rich made himself a Smitty sled too.

Shortly after we got set up in our spot, while gabbing and jigging for fish, I hear-- FLAG!!!

It was my tip-up and on it was a small bass!

Flags continued popping up for us the entire day!!!  Fortunately for us, the folk's fishing near by were nice enough to watch em and yell out FLAG every so often.  Hey-- I was to busy reelin in gills and getting the hang of my new rod to notice my own flags.  :)

Rich got a bass on his tip-up too!
We had several flags pop up and some of the fish we missed.  We were sorry to see those folk's heading in.  Now who's gonna yell FLAG for us?

Rich was awesome to fish with.  We caught 9 million gills.  I put several of em back because the smaller fish would swipe the jig before the bigger ones.  Then I put on a larger jig, but the little ones still managed to swipe it first.

This poor little ole gill looks like it barely escaped the teeth of a predator:

FLAG!!!

This little pike seemed HUGE coming through the ice!  As I was bringing him in, he struck my other tip-up bait and set that flag off too!

Shortly after 2PM it was time to head over to the tourney weigh-in.

I picked up my five biggest gills to enter into the tourney.

Originally, I wasn't planning on competing at all since this tourney was the last of a series and based on points.

However, my plans changed and since I was going to be fishing Wawasee anyways, I might as well see how I fare.

It's too bad I didn't hook into any crappie or perch.  For those were the other two categories in the tourney.

Rocky was the big winner of the day, as he won the series.

Fish weigh-ins are fun.  It's exciting to be able to see the best fish pulled out out of a lake that day.

In addition to cash, other prizes were awarded as well. 

Door prizes were also given out.

Even though I didn't win anything, it was still a really fun day of fishing with friends.

The Amish father and son gave me permission to take their photo.  They won a first place in gills and crappie; site fishing in shallow water. 

Congrats to all the winners!!!