Tourney
My first tourney of the year is Saturday. I'm pretty stoked. 100 boats (2 person teams). This is the largest one day Musky tournament in Illinois, starting at 7 am and running through 4 pm. My partner and I have been lucky enough to place twice in this tourney in the past. Finishing 5th one year and 3rd another.
As this tourney is run by my fishing club and I'm on the tourney committee, I will be waking up at 3:30 am in order to help set up starting at 4:30. As one might imagine running a tourney of this size is no easy task. We generally start planning about 5 months in advance. Tournament flyers and advertising, obtaining sponsors, setting up raffle prizes etc.
With 100 boats we will have to manage the launch in order to make it as efficient as possible, but there will always be some yahoos that much up the process. In order to try and get this thing to run smoothly we will have 5 guys working that landing, 2 guys selling coffee and donuts, 8 guys working the registration tables, two guys working the docks, one guy explaining the rules, 3 or 4 guys wandering around helping out in any way possible, and two guys as starters.
After the tourney is over, we will have guys tabulating points to determine the winners (and top 10 finishers), dinner, raffles, awards ceremony and a small (and I emphasize small) amount of drinking. Then after everybody leaves, clean up which usually takes a couple of hours with 6 guys. In total the day will run from about 3:30 am to about 8-9 pm. Long day, but it's a lot of fun and the money generated by the club will be used to fund conservation, youth fishing events etc.
Weather is supposed to be a high of 58 degrees and rainy. This will probably be better than the hail we ran into last year, or the 40 mph winds we had the year before. I will pick up the boat tommorrow night and a few supplies for the tourney. Load everything up Saturday morning and off I will go. Dammit am I excited, I can't wait.
posted by Muskyboy @ 8:01 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
OK, so I actually went and looked up this Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy) because I have never actually heard of nor seen one - no, seriously. My father grew up in MO and I heard a lot about catfish (again, never actually seen one) but for the past 35 years it has been all trout and salmon - little bit of crabbing on the side . . .
These are some ugly suckers - predatory - but seriously like 6' long? geez.
Do you actually eat them?
Woodchuck likes to white water raft and has done so for 25 years - and there was the time the coast gaurd had to pull him off a cliff - but at least there aren't any smelly fish coming home in the coolers . . .
This is way more interesting than poker ;)
Most serious Musky fisherman are 100% catch and release. I have never eaten one (I am one of those 100% catch and release guys), but my Grandmother used to tell me she thought they tasted great. A close relative to the Musky is the Northern Pike. They are a little less aggresive and don't get as big. I have eaten a few of those, and they are yummy. The problem with them (and Musky if you chose to eat them) are they have a lot of Y bones in them and you can't use a normal fillet method or you will be picking the bones out of your teeth as you eat them. I've got a great story about filleting a Pike that I will have to post at some point.
yeah, my dad makes this big deal about how you can just "lift" the bones out of trout and salmon
I just have bad flashbacks of grandma's salmon with capers . . .
hmm, "catch and release" - I know we have to release wild salmon, but otherwise it's all about dinner -
OK - so googled you last night and found out WAY TOO much about Musky Tournaments . . . a newsletter, ya'll have a newsletter even?!
What did you google? Just curious.
Yes, we have a newsletter that goes out to about 300 members of our chapter. I think there are 50 chapters in the US. The FRV Chapter is generally considered one of the best. We have a monthly newsletter, monthly meetings that draw from 60-120 people. We have an awards dinner that brings in about 100 people. We run two tournaments each year as our major fund raisers so that we can help out the local DNR, host 2 or 3 kids fishing events and stock musky in local lakes.
your name, city, musky etc.
PS - as a board member your phone number is on the newsletter . . .
but I promise no prank calls -
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. It's been a long time since I actually read our newsletter.
yeah, after I googled you I googled myself, the kids, Woodchuck - which I do periodically -
*doink*
enough info to outline my life story . . .
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