Central Iowa Ice Sticks, a Facebook group held an ice tournament at Badger Creek Lake south of Des Moines this past Sunday. The event brought teams in from all over the state to compete for the largest bag of fish. Each team had to catch 8 sunfish and 8 crappies to weigh-in for their team total. I teamed up with my usual tournament partner Mark Anderson for the event. Mark was able to look over the lake to try and locate the bigger panfish. Badger Creek Lake is full of fish, but getting those larger fish to bite would get you in the top of the standings.
We hit the lake bright and early on Saturday to find as many different areas that were holding the bigger fish. Mark found some better fish the week before and they were in the same general vicinity this past weekend. I hit areas that were not checked the weekend before, along with some deeper "crappie" hangouts. We had a plan A, B, and C for the tournament on Sunday, we were feeling pretty good about getting a good limit. No matter how much you plan, or how many areas you have, you just never know in an event of this size. I have said it several times, but Mark and I work very well as teammates, even though we don't fish together very much during the ice season, when it is tourney time, we put it all together and make things work.
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8 Sunfish/8 Crappies
weighing 10.85# and the WIN |
We ended up staying with plan "A" all day long, which consisted of staying near the main channel of the middle-lake area. We worked over a large area, trolling through the area looking for active fish. Being mobile and using our
Vexilar FLX-28 made finding and catching the fish fairly easy this weekend. This was one weekend that saw the fish taking a variety of baits, colors, plastics and livebait, it was more of a search and find on these particular days. Mark had the big fish bite for the day, bringing in a Red-ear sunfish that weighed 1.08 pounds, an amazing fish. We finished our bag of fish with 3 red-ears, 5 gills and 8 crappies. The crappies were right around the 0.70 pound range, the bluegills were all very nice as well. We ended up WINNING the tournament with a total of 10.85 pounds, almost 3/4 of a pound over 2nd place. It was just icing on top of the cake of a fantastic weekend of fishing!
Hats off to Randy Bieghler for running his first ever tournament, I hope he continues his efforts in the future, as his first one was well ran. Badger Creek is a healthy lake right now, one to put on your ice fishing list.
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| Many baits worked on this particular weekend |
Nice job! Congratulations.
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