It was Gary Creger's first time on the leaderboard after three failed attempts fishing Gull Lake -and, boy, was it a doozy.
Coming in first place, Creger's 5.2 pound northern pike blew competition out of the water at the 29th annual Brainerd Jaycees $150,000 Ice Fishing Extravaganza Saturday, Jan. 26. For context, second place was a walleye at just over 2.9 pounds.
Hitting the hole at noon at the beginning of the competition, Creger said he got a bite at about 2:20 p.m., somewhere about 1.5 to 2 feet off the bottom of the bay with a sucker minnow on the line.
"He felt big when he was running on it. I could feel the weight on it. It felt good. It felt nice," Creger told the Dispatch. Hailing from Forest Lake, Creger's first place finish garnered a brand new Ford F-150, courtesy of the Brainerd Jaycees. "I knew he was a good size, but I wasn't up to see the board yet. I figured it was going to get me somewhere someplace."
"Just about didn't come. I thought it was going to be too cold," added Creger, who fished in a relatively balmy 4 degrees at noon, while gales were predicted to bring a wind chill factor of 20 to 30 degrees below zero, Hole-in-the-Day Bay, for the most part, barely saw a gust until about 2 p.m. "I'm glad I showed up."
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Event organizers
"On Thursday-when we were all setting this up-it was very cold out here. We were all very skeptical of how it was going to be like today," said Clint Meyer, the contest chairperson. "Today the weather's been awesome. You really couldn't ask for a better day. Very little wind."
The extravaganza is the largest charitable ice fishing event in the world-typically hosting about 10,000 anglers every January, and doling out $200,000 in cash and prizes annually. About 700 volunteers-and scores of law enforcement, medical professionals, private vendors and transportation employees-help to the make the ice fishing extravaganza possible.
"We didn't expect to have this much snow-because the last six years we haven't had any snow and it's just been glare ice," Meyer said.
This abundance of snow factored into another discussion revolving around this year's contest as drifts forced anglers into checkpoints-where security were taking extra precautions to ensure every angler was empty-handed, fish-wise, and thus following competition rules.
Last year, the Brainerd Jaycees temporarily withheld prizes to Stephan, Ivan and Rostik Lyogky-a son, father and cousin group of anglers from Ohio who garnered first, third and 98th place prizes respectively-after allegations surfaced that trio cheated.
After an investigation and polygraph test were conducted, the Lyogkys were exonerated-but event organizers took a number of additional steps to ensure fish ferried up to the weigh-in tent were, in fact, caught in Hole-in-the-Day Bay between noon to 3 p.m., Saturday.
The other 9,000
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Creger was among roughly 9,000 people from all over the globe who took part, crammed into the frigid bowl of the bay. While thousands crowd the holes for three hours between noon and 3 p.m., it's the simple reality that most anglers will never land on the leaderboard, let alone garner a prize.
Count Tiffany Stryker among that crowd. Stryker traversed Hold-in-the-Day Bay with with a 5-year-old boy, Archer, in tow and an 8-month-old girl, Paige, nestled in her coat-though that's hardly an indication she's not in the thick of it, Stryker said.
"Family fishes-can't imagine missing out on that. It's fun to bring the little ones out," said Stryker, who's five to six years of extravaganza experience is a small portion of a more than a century-worth of collective experience in her family in the Gull Lake competition. "It's a tradition. It's a lot of fun. I have yet to catch a fish-but the group, rarely does someone not get something and that someone is usually me."
For a group of lifelong friends originally of Michigan, now spread out across the States-dubbed, impromptu, as the "Scorpions"-the contest marked their first real taste of ice fishing. For Tracy Leskauskas of Michigan, Kelly Dwyer of Minnesota, Toni Alvey of Arizona and Antoinette Viteli of Kentucky, Saturday represented a "brand new girls-weekend trip."
"I'm from Arizona and I've never packed a pole," admitted Alvey. "We've been friends since we were 3."
"Everything we learned was on YouTube," Viteli added.
"We're still trying to find our hole," Alvey said.
Other notes
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• Save the date-Saturday, Jan. 25, 2020, marks the next Brainerd Jaycees $150,000 Ice Fishing Extravaganza and the 30th anniversary of the popular contest on Gull Lake.
• Dispatch reporters are happy to report they were able to track down the elusive "Banana Man," also known as Tim Hoffman, after close to two hours of searching. Hoffman, dressed in something like a Halloween banana costume, was among a number of extravaganza-goers regalled in wonky, festive outfits.
• Readers may remember Amber Alam-the Bangalore, India, native who ventured out onto the ice last year to experience a taste of Northland culture that stands in stark contrast to his home (where temperatures typically hover around the 80s this time of year). Alam made the journey back a third time-this time he didn't have a company retreat to take advantage of, so he paid for the trip himself-and joined his friends for another day on the ice.
"These are a bunch of guys, conservative politically, so to embrace this Muslim from
India-it's a pretty cool thing culturally, considering the divisiveness of the world," said Dave Levine, a friend of Alam. "It really goes to show that once you get people talking, you don't have differences."
For more photos, go to https://bit.ly/2Wm9l7O .
