NAIFC

Joe and Myron

The second stop on the 2009 NAIFC trail, once again lead competitors back to Rhinelander, WI, where just weeks earlier this gracious community held the coveted NAIFC Championship on Boom Lake. With the welcome the NAIFC and tournament teams received earlier, they were eager to come back to the area, but this time the skills and knowledge of the NAIFC teams would be tested on a clear water fishery, in the name of Crescent Lake.

Crescent is a well known lake to the area, having multiple fish holding cribs and sparse shallow weed growth sprawled throughout its 626 acres. These two structural elements, proved to be the key for 2008 NAIFC Champions and 3 Time Team of The Year duo of Joe Pikulski and Myron Gilbert, to bring in their needed 8 Bluegills and 8 Perch to top the leader-board and bring home the win at Crescent.

Pikulski and Gilbert, along with other teams worked hard in pre-fishing to locate as many cribs as they could. Pikulski told NAIFC “ there are a lot of cribs in this lake, but not all hold fish, so you needed to find as many as you could to find the right ones that held the bluegills needed to win this event”. Finding the right crib(s) during pre-fishing was made a bit easier through the help of local Rhinelander business owner Brian Gaber, owner of Electronic Guide Service LLC. Through Gaber’s business, teams could purchase maps that held all crib locations on the lake, included with the map were GPS coordinates of the exact location of the cribs. This definitely helped cut down on scouting time, but had many teams checking the same cribs over and over throughout pre-fishing. Gilbert told NAIFC “we checked many cribs, but other teams were doing the same thing, so we were looking for cribs that no other team could find. When we checked a map located crib using a underwater camera, we panned around and BINGO, we spotted another one. And this one wasn’t marked and held good fish! This was instrumental for us to win this tournament”.

Perch seemed to be all over the lake, using 8 to 10 feet of water and along remaining weed growth. But, in most locations, perch to small to weigh were the most prevalent. Pre-fishing showed some teams that there were better and bigger perch mixed in though, and being mobile and cutting lots of holes was instrumental to coming in with your perch and cashing a check. Pikulski and Gilbert, along with second place finishers to the NAIFC- Jeremy Burri and Nick Krueger of Oshkosh, WI, worked the shallows and found these small pockets of bigger perch, sometimes just a few yards away from the big numbers of smaller perch. Both Burri and Krueger told NAIFC “drill, drill, drill until you find them, you have to be mobile and willing to work to find fish, on any given day. Today it worked in our favor and we found a good pod of perch to weigh”.

The third place team was another WI team of Bob and Neil Jacobson, who also came in to the weigh station with their needed 16 fish. Again, both Bob and Neil noted that finding the right crib(s) for the Bluegills and scouring the shallows for the perch was needed to be on top of the leader-board.

This win for Pikulski and Gilbert, once again notches them in the lead for the Team of the Year race. But, with six more tournaments to be fished, a few teams still have their eyes on that title. Team of Doug Bussian and John Danula, took Big Fish honors (a .82lb Perch) and a 6th place finish at Crescent, putting them in second place for Team of the Year.

The next stop for the NAIFC brings teams back to Minnesota, where they will be fishing Lake Byllesby. This tournament is hosted by the Cannon Falls and Northfield Chamber of Commerce. For all tournament information see the NAIFC on the web at http://www.naifc.com/index.php.
By: Jim Hudson NAIFC Pro Staff