Home - by Squeeks
Event #3. Green Lake, Princeton, MN
“Home” as described by google - “The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household”.
Green Lake, where MN Made Outdoors Event #3 was held is considered my “home” lake. While I don’t live on the lake per say, I do live just down the road and frequent this lake often in the summer and fall time for the schools of roaming crappies. It’s a fun place to bring my dad or my friends to for a couple hours.
Regardless, we started that Sunday morning off in 24 FOW targeting our crappies. We filled our 8 crappies and moved a small distance to our bluegill spot which was rather shallow in 4 to 6 FOW. We had pre-fished this spot for a little bit a couple days before the event so we knew that would be the spot we would fill our bluegills and some pesky bass. In 2.5 hours of being there we filled our bag with 7 decent bluegills and took off across the lake to an old crappie hole Dylan and I have fished before. We drilled a dozen holes and caught a few small ones. Nothing that had us feeling good, so we took off back across the lake to our starting spot. This is where we really started to fill the bag with better crappies. We upgraded 4 or 5 of our crappies from small 8 inchers to nice plump little slabs that were close to 10 inches. As we got closer to 2pm we kept pushing looking for 2 more nice ones. About 5 minutes before we needed to leave I popped a nice 10 incher and we packed up and headed to weigh-in.
Our names were announced and we weighed in our bag at 6.93lbs, good enough for the lead and a spot on the “hot seats” which are reserved for the current leaders of the event. We’ve never sat in those chairs in the 3 years we’ve been doing this, but what a cool feeling to finally be there! Four teams later the Olstad’s knocked us off the hot seat by .02 lbs. I stood next to Chad and Austin for the rest of the weigh-in bugging the heck out of them. It was a neat and different feeling being right there at the top - as team after team was weighing in their fish. I’m bugging the Olstads constantly still and I’m freaking out in my head thinking we might land in the top 5 or 10. Teams continue to weigh-in and I continue to stand there. Last team weighs in and of course they drop a massive 7.55lb bag which is no surprise because Nick and Leif are absolute assassins on the ice.
I look over at Dylan who looks like he’s seen a ghost. We took 3rd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I walk away from the crowd and start freaking out in my head because we’ve never done this good and we’ve struggled pretty bad this year but we kept our heads up and made it a day. For the first time in either of our lives we are cashing a check! I couldn’t have been more proud of Dylan and myself for what we accomplished. Some will say “but you didn’t win, you took 3rd “ and you’re absolutely correct, but what needs to be pointed out is how good the guys in this league are. There are insanely good anglers and I aspire to be just as good as them someday, but for now we are going to enjoy this huge victory in our heads and continue to keep getting better and better as anglers. “Home” will always have a special place in my heart for as long as I live and I’ll always remember that weekend.
Congrats to Nick and Leif on taking first and to the Olstads who took 2nd and had a heckuva day too! See you all at Mazaska!
$queak$
Where were your gills caught.?
If you can share.