A team from Illinois, Tony Boshold and Mike McNett, won the fourth-ever North American Ice Fishing Championship on Lake Mary because of a dedicated effort that left little to chance.

Tony Boshold and MikeMcNett Win Ice Team NAIFC Championship

Two-person teams, 75 in all, had to qualify last winter for a shot at this title, considered ice fishing’s Super Bowl. Distinct from ‘derbies,’ competitors must find their own fish, drill their own holes, and execute a game plan.
“Big prizes and $10,000 in cash go to the winners,” said Dave Genz, Ice Team captain and weigh-in emcee. “But what they really want are those rings.”

Indeed, a pair of matching gold championship rings goes to the victors, along with the title of Ice Team Champion.
This past summer, after the announcement was made that the event would be held on Mary (in the lake-rich Alexandria area), Boshold and McNett began the work that ended with them slipping on those rings and smiling for the assembled press.

Pattern Fishing Applied
The process they went through is not new, but remains unknown to many casual anglers, winter or summer. Even those who know the concept of pattern fishing rarely apply it to everyday outings, but would benefit greatly if they did.

First, Boshold (Lake in the Hills, IL) and McNett (Lombard, IL) bought the contour map of Lake Mary and studied it at home. Even from Illinois, they could see potentially high-percentage areas. “We picked five spots we liked the looks of,” said McNett. They color-coded depth levels to make structural elements stick out more clearly. One of the places they admired was an “inside corner on a point” a place where deeper water tucks in close to the shallower water on the ‘bar’ or point. Further study revealed a second, nearly identical spot at the opposite end of the same depression. It turns out that the bay called ‘Little Mary’ (comprising the tournament boundaries) has two extended points, and both come close to this depression.

Being intrigued by a spot on the map and fishing it are two different things. So the team put its marked map in a plastic bag and drove to Alexandria this past summer. They spent a week of vacation in their boat scouring the lake bottom, checking the map for accuracy and studying the makeup of every spot that held promise.

“The map was not real accurate,” noted Boshold, “but they never are.” Indeed, older contour maps were not made for fishing, and are considered general guides rather than perfect representations. Using an Aqua-Vu underwater camera, they studied every subtle feature in this large bay.
To make the practice perfect, they leaned over the side of the boat and fished vertically with ice rods, using the same style jigs and plastic tails they would later use in the competition.

“We even put the Vexilar over the side and fished just like we were ice fishing,” said McNett. “You have to keep your mojo going, even in the summer.”

The pair drew a hand-rendered lake map showing the true shape of structural features and noting important things such as thick weeds, weed edges and slopes leading into even slight depressions. Also important was catching some fish, so they could get a feel for the general size of the lake’s current crop of crappies and sunfish.

“That way,” said Boshold, “you know whether you’re on the right fish during the tournament.”

The team entered key locations, including several smaller depressions, into a GPS unit so they could easily and accurately return to them come winter.
Fast forward to the days leading up to the championship. Guided by all this homework, Boshold and McNett methodically checked their top spots, to see which were holding good fish under the fresh coating of ice.

Crappie Saturday
Tournament rules called for crappies on Saturday and sunfish Sunday.
“When the tournament started,” said Boshold, “we knew exactly where we were going.” There was a crowd of contestants on one of the ‘inside corner meets the point’ spots, but the other was vacant. Fishing near the outside boundary, alone save for a few other teams, Boshold and McNett pummeled big crappies, releasing most of what they caught, bringing in the maximum allowed, 15 fish that weighed 14.40 pounds.

Only four other teams exceeded 10 pounds, and the event became essentially a two-team battle after Day One.

Now, the rest of the story… despite having only a day-and-a-half to practice, veteran Tom Fischer and partner Ryan Fischer of rural Hatley, WI spotted both of the ‘inside corner meets the point’ spots and quickly checked them.
Tom moved from hole to hole with an Aqua-Vu camera, Ryan fished, and the two compared notes. “I liked those inside corners on the map,” said Tom. “I assumed there would be weeds in there and there were. The weedline (where the weeds end) started at about 10 feet and some weeds ran out to about 12 feet.

“Inside corners are ideal spots, and fortunately that one was way out by the boundary. Those fish stayed put (because there was relatively light pressure on them from other teams). We found the fish we liked and left them alone until the tournament started.”

Team Fischer weighed 15 crappies that totaled 13.93 pounds for a solid hold on second place. The stage was set for a Sunday showdown.

Sunfish Sunday
Almost three pounds separated second place from third place after Day One. Because big sunfish are typically smaller than big crappies, it would take a miracle for anyone to challenge the top two teams.

Still, Ice Team organizers had forced competitors to display versatility by asking them to selectively catch sunfish on Sunday. It was up to McNett and Boshold to hold off the Fischers and others to claim this crown.

“We worked our crappie spot again for ‘gills in the morning,” said Boshold, “but we only caught three fish and left. We moved to our ‘fishy spot’ where we had been catching numbers of average fish, just to make sure we had our limit.”

This was a smaller depression, perhaps the size of a pickup truck, that dropped into about 12 feet, with 7-8 foot flats around it. The key was to drill holes amid clusters of weeds, right on the slope as it broke down into the depression. We heard the same thing from Jeff and Ben Wright, past winners of this event, and others: you might have thought sunfish would be in the thicker weeds in shallower water, but they were favoring the deeper depressions.

“You don’t have to be a local to catch fish,” said Genz. “These guys who travel all over fishing Trap Attacks burn through tanks of auger gas until they figure it out.”

Important detail: top finishers figured out that aggressive crappies—which were holding in the same spots as sunfish—were characteristically suspended higher and would grab baits that were lowered slowly, before they got down to the sunfish zone. So they dropped jigs straight to bottom, then fished them near bottom, to selectively tempt sunfish.

Importance of Plastics
Both of the top two teams caught many of their fish on ice jigs mated with soft plastic tails, a practice gaining momentum even where live bait has traditionally reigned.

Boshold compared plastic tails to crankbaits, in that they seem to pick off aggressive biters and select for bigger fish. He and McNett used Fiskas Wolfram jigs tipped with Little Atom Nuggies, a plastic shaped like a tadpole. The Fischers relied on Lindy Munchies Tiny Tails in Bubble Gum color on Fischer Fry jigs.

“We hooked the tail so it hung straight off, horizontally,” explained Tom. “That way, the tail really quivers when you jiggle it fast. It hangs out there and just says, ‘come here, fishy.’ I work it up and down, so that tail is always moving. It’s important to keep working it as you go up and down.” (Fischers downsized to a smaller vertical jig for sunfish day, tying the knot tight then sliding the knot so the jig would swim at a 45-degree angle, similar to a Lindy Genz Bug, which they believe helps sunfish get the hook in when attempting to feed.)

McNett and Boshold tied in a fly above the jig and soft plastic, known in Ice Team circles as the ‘Michigan Rig,’ after the Michigan anglers who brought it to prominence. The jig becomes, in essence, the sinker, and the fly offers finicky fish a second choice of subtle presentation.

“There are many ways to do the Michigan Rig,” said Boshold. “At iceteam.com there are pages of instructions. In the tournament, I threaded my fly on the hook, then doubled the line with the fly at the bottom of what would become the loop. Then I tied a double overhand knot and tightened it up, and the fly was on a loop.” The jig is tied on about a foot below the fly.
After the fish were all weighed on Sunday afternoon, McNett and Boshold won the championship with 15 sunfish totaling 4.30 pounds, for a two-day total of 18.70 pounds. The Fischers finished second, also weighing 15 sunfish that totaled 3.68 pounds, for a two-day total of 17.61 pounds.
Minnesotans Ray Legatt and Joe Honer, perennial contenders for this title, wound up third with an impressive total of 15.02 pounds.

In addition to the $10,000 first-place check and gold rings, Boshold and McNett also won $750 for catching the tournament’s biggest fish, a 1.34-pound crappie. They also received two Fish Trap Pro shelters, two Ice Armor blue suits, two Aqua-Vu camera systems, two StrikeMaster four-stroke Strike Lite augers, and two Lindy tackle packages worth $200 each.

Excerpted from articles written by Mark Strand