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!!! 

Fried Fish & Apple Crisp

Gladys and her friend, Sierra, went fishing with me a few days ago.  They wanted to keep and eat fish.  However, I'm generally not into killing fish.  Also, the fish we happened to be catching that day were not even as big as my hand.  So, we didn't kill any of them.

If I catch a nice fish, even then, I very rarely will keep it to eat.  I enjoy fishing more for the sport and relaxation than the killing.

The other day I was invited to fish with friends who had kept 3 panfish.  I was running later than I had planned to and by the time I arrived to fish, they were packing up to leave.  They asked me if I wanted to keep the fish.  They expected that I would catch a bunch more, since I had planned to fish the evening bite.

I didn't do well in there shallow spot of three feet of water.  I moved to a depth of six feet and the fish were biting like crazy!  I caught many that I felt were too small to keep, which I put back right away.  Then there were some, that after unhooking them I would keep, but they tried so hard to get back in the hole, that I had to let em go.

I had another line, with a different jig, in the hole next to the one I was fishing and occasionally the fish would eat the resting jig!  Those fish I kept cause they didn't seem like they would do to well after I got the jig out from deep in their throat.

When the night darkness set in, the gills turned off.  Thirty minutes past and I was considering moving to a different spot.  I had just charged a glow-in-the-dark jig and wanted to see how it would do.  Bamm, a crappie!!!  The crappies turned ON!  When I ran out of propane, it was time to head home, I kept four crappies, several gills and a few redears.

The fish seem so small when trying to peel their flesh from their rib cage.  I did the best I could, thinking the entire time, that these poor fish gave their lives for this meal, and I was going to try not to waste any of them.

I've never been hungry for fish after I have cleaned them.  This time was no exception, and these fish looked great, none of them had any black specks or other sort of parasite that I could see.

The boneless fillets when into a milk bath and in the fridge until I was ready to cook them. Then I made a dish of just egg and a dish of crushed Club crackers.  The fillets went from the milk, to the egg dish, then were breaded with the crumbs.

I soon realized that I would not have enough cracker crumbs, so I mixed in some Panko.

Frying fish is fairly new to me and I treated it like a delicate procedure.  The last time I fried walleye, I had trouble with the breading staying on, but I didn't use any egg.  This time was better, though I was still searching for some more improvements.

A favorite site of mine is IceShanty.com , it's full of great info and helpful folk's.

So, I got me some fish frying tips from that website and I now know what improvements to make for the next time I try this.

I wasn't unhappy with the end results.  Our family supper was shared with Lloyd and Mom.  Lloyd said it was the best fish he had ever eaten-- he liked it better than the walleye!

The kiddies thought it was the best chicken nuggets they had ever had.  They seen me clean the fish and swore that they were not going to eat any of it. ;)

For dessert, I made an Apple Crisp.

Apples, butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and oats; I don't use a recipe on this one.

It's easy to throw together.

The beauty of baking an apple crisp when you fry fish, is the aroma of cinnamon apples will counteract the frying fish. ;)

The apple crisp smelled delightful!

Yuummmmmm!