NAIFC

Tom and Ryan Fischer

The uncle, nephew team of Tom and Ryan Fischer are no strangers to competitive ice angling with many past triumphs on the Trap Attack series of old. Now this duo can add a NAIFC win to their list of accomplishments on the ice. Chisago Lake, north of St. Paul in Central Minnesota is typical of Minnesota panfish lakes. Good populations of both bluegills and crappie and strong stands of weeds that hold both species. For an angler to win this tournament, both crappie and bluegill would be needed. There are many situations where anglers will find both crappies and sunfish together but almost always, there is some small wrinkle. One species might be higher in the water column or perhaps off the structure, often relating close but also not together.

“What we found was that we caught almost all of our good crappies right below the ice, explained Ryan. In fact, the fish were within a foot of the bottom of the ice in real shallow water- less than four feet. The crappies bit fairly aggressively, hitting plastics. While the crappies were indeed high, the exact opposite can be said of the bluegills on this particular day. “The gills on the other hand were close to the bottom, right off the deep edge of weed stands in about twelve feet of water and we had a hard time triggering these fish with plastics. We had to tip with wax worms or spikes,” stressed Ryan.

“During pre-fishing, we moved a lot, drilled lots of holes and tried to learn as much as possible, explained Ryan. The Fischers along with several of the other top teams found many of their fish in the southern most bay that was in the tournament boundary. “There is just a lot of fish in this lake and finding crappie that were slightly bigger would be crucial for trying to do well in this tournament. We knew going in that the weights would be tight and we spent much of our time trying to find some little edge where we could either trigger larger fish or find something the rest of the field would overlook because by the time the tournament starts, there aren’t many secrets.”

Other anglers also discovered these high riding crappies as well but for the Fischers, this fine tuning might have been the deciding factor between winning and placing. Many anglers missed these fish because the fish were so close to the ice that they missed them on their electronics. Even sight fishing can be difficult because the fish were often too high to see unless the fish passed right below the hole. These high riding crappies were missed by much of the field and as a result, didn’t get pressured or cropped by angling pressure. The plastics used by the Fischer team also seemed to sort through and trigger some of the larger fish. “We fished outside, fished a lot of holes and fished aggressively. Often, we would pull the largest fish off the spot right away and then we would make small moves, trying to trigger the larger fish,” added Ryan.

Many anglers commented that where the crappie and bluegill were together, it was hard to get down through the crappies to target the bluegills that were relating to the bottom of the weed edge. Tournament organizer and third place finisher, Mike McNett commented that the bite was on and the anglers competing had a lot of fun catching several quality panfish. We definitely want to come back as the fishing was outstanding and Frankies did an outstanding job of hosting the tournament. For anglers not familiar with Frankies, they are a large and very well respected Twin City Dealer for Ranger, Triton and Mercury who also specialize in just about anything fishing related.

Before the tournament, many of the NAIFC Pros including Dave Genz interacted and answered questions for beginning competitors. “We don’t want this to be an intimidating environment, explains McNett. If you love to ice fish, show up. The guys who have a lot of experience go out of their way to help the new anglers and put some worries at ease. If you love to ice fish, you will fit into this crowd.” More info on the NAIFC can be found at www.naifc.org.