Last Saturday February 4, Lars and I went to the ice fishing tournament at the reservoir called Sulphur Creek that is about a mile from Grandma & Grandpa Harry's house. We have actually been a couple times years ago before Ashton was born when it used to be a HUGE tournament with thousands of dollars being given away in prizes. These days it's a much smaller tournament with just three prizes given out to the people who catch the 3 biggest fish. They also do a raffle for a few other prizes, but it is nothing compared to what it used to be.
We drove up to Evanston Friday afternoon. Ashton and Gunnar had been so excited all week and couldn't wait for Friday to come around. Ashton was even more excited when Lars went in and checked him out of school an hour early. That was his first time being checked out and he thought it was so cool...haha :)
We got to town and went and got our licenses and some food for our lunches the next day, then headed out to the Grandpa & Grandma's house. The wind was howling as usual, but we were hoping it would die down by the next morning. Anyway it's always fun to go home...Grandma made us lasagna and Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner and her awesome caramel browies that I was hoping she had. Ashton and Gunnar immediately find things to play with until bedtime.
They were actually excited that they didn't have to go fishing with us and just got to stay home with Grandma and Aunt Kelli and wear their pajamas and play all day.
We got up early Sat. morning and were at the reservoir by 6:30.
There wasn't any wind when we left the house, so we got our hopes up that it might be a nice day, or at least wouldn't pick up till later, but we were dead WRONG! As soon as we got there it was already extremely windy and we had to walk straight into the wind out on to the ice to pick our spot. That was a cold walk.
So we didn't end up going out very far. Lars told me to pick a spot, so I did and we started setting up our tent. Which is no easy task in the wind! Oh and it was dark. I just kept thinking (all day really) Thank goodness we have our tent! And our heater! So we got all set up and started fishing at 7:00. It wasn't long before we started having bites and then catching fish, and more fish, and more fish...really pretty non-stop until about 12:30! We caught 40 fish between us all day!
We've never had much luck at Sulphur Creek at all.
The one year we went, and it was a two day thing back then, I remember we sat there for two days straight (with no tent in horrible wind and blowing snow!) and had one, yes ONE bite the entire time! So my spot I picked ended up being a good one.
Pretty early on I could tell I hooked into a big one and was getting so excited until I saw him coming out of the hole and realized it was a SUCKER!
They are so gross...I had to make myself touch it for a picture.
Talk about disappointing since they don't count :( So we measured it anyway and it was 21 inches long. We ended up saving it, just because there's no use throwing trash fish back really. Anyway in all of the other fish we caught all day, not a single one was big enough to be taken back at the end of the day and measured. They had to be 16 inches or bigger.
About an hour before the tournament was over, so at 1:30, I hooked into another big one. As soon as Lars saw my pole he could tell it was a big one, so he came over and kneeled down by my hole and got ready to help me and I got it almost up to the hole and it snapped my line!!!! We really think it would have been a winner. The sucker didn't fight at all and this one fought hard and broke me off. Oh well. We couldn't believe we'd actually caught 40 fish. More than we've really caught anywhere we've been ice-fishing.
And if only my 21 inch sucker had been a trout, we'd have been $900 richer!
The winning fish of the tournament was 20 inches.
Lars said he was going to talk to the guy in charge and suggest that next year they award a prize to the best trash fish :)
Lars said he was going to talk to the guy in charge and suggest that next year they award a prize to the best trash fish :)
After the tournament we went home and hung out for a bit, then my Mom and I went to church, then they boys and Aunt Kelli & Grandpa Harry met us for dinner in town.
After not much sleep Friday night, everyone slept better Saturday, then we got up Sunday and had breakfast, then packed up and got ready to come home. We wanted to get back in time for Gunnar to go to Amalia's party.
It was a fun little weekend getaway that I think we'll be doing again next year!
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