The crowd onshore chatted while music and raffle winners names were announced in the background. Concessions of hot dogs and hamburgers, soda and chips, were sold to spectators who needed to grab a bite, too.

Out on the ice it was all the sound of ATV’s driving, while participants carried buckets to the officials’ weighing tent. Bob Hertling and Greg Huiras were the officials for the tournament, with Hertling weighing and measuring fish and Huiras recorded names for the records. Wax worms and minnows were the favorite bait of the day, since they came free with registration.

“But the minnows and wax worms go quick,” said Bob Hertling of Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club. “We might be out by now.”

It was only 12:30 pm. The bait went quick because there was no limit as to how many people could enter the tournament.

Tim Matheson and his friend, 90 year-old Bob Kamm out ice fishing in lawn chairs for the 43rd Annual Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Fishing Derby this past weekend.

“I’ve been doing this for many, many years,” said Huiras. “The average amount of participants is about 1,000. This year there’s about 700, but in the past sometimes there’s been 1,500 people. It just gets bigger every year. There’s good ice today. Nice weather,” said Huiras. “Someone even landed an airplane.”

“We don’t know how safe that was,” Hertling said.

“The MN DNR has a list of how thick the ice needs to be for different ratings, like it’s about 4 inches for someone to walk on, and maybe 14 for a small truck. I was out earlier, and the ice was about 17 inches thick. The lake is maybe 20 feet deep in some places,” said Huiras.

Most of the participants released their fish once they were weighed, which probably was a good thing, as Hertling felt the fish numbers were a little down this year.

“They’ve been stocking the lake. The aerator was replaced last year. Less snow on the ice means more sunlight, which means more oxygen for the fish. And a good fish population. There’s been years when we’ve had a few of these sheets for participants,” Hertling said of his two clipboards with the targeted fish for the day.

Bennett Madsen displays a perch he caught ice fishing this weekend at the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club 43rd Annual Fishing Derby.

“We had some people bring up fish before the tournament started, like today, and we can’t take them until noon. Gotta be here at 12:00. We take fish up until 3:10pm; that extra ten minutes is so the fishermen can get it to us if they catch it right at 2:58pm or something,” said Hertling. “One year we had a fella come up here and bring in a big fish right after 3 pm, maybe it was 3:15 or something and we just couldn’t take it, and he would have won. But he understood the cut off time was 3:10,” said Hertling.

Northerns and perch were the big catch of the tournament, while Walley and Bass were fewer–with only one in each category being caught. Hertling weighed and measured everything that came to the tent, minus the Northern under 24 inches–those have to go back in the lake right away since they’re illegal to keep.

Even if the fish numbers were down some, there were still plenty of people out on the ice like Tim Matheson and 90 year-old Bob Kamm.

“We go every year to certain tournaments like this,” said Matheson.

Dana Devorak and her family were also out on the ice, camped out right near the airplane.

Calvin Sellner hooked a 4.4 pound bass with a sucker minnow as bait during the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club fishing derby this weekend. It came in first place for bass and was the only one caught for the whole tournament.

“It’s not our plane,” said Devorak. “But it’s good to help people find where we are on the ice.”

Devorak used to fish on the river and caught some pretty big fish in the summer, but today her and her family were catching perch with red wax worms.

“This is my first time here since I was a kid. When I was 13, I competed in this. I’m 41 now. We’re from New Ulm. It was a nice day, and the kids love fishing. We wanted to get them out. I’d like to win something in the pan fish category that would be fun, anything for the kids.”

The largest fish in each category determines the winner of the derby for first, second, and third places with fish categories being sunfish, perch, crappie, bass, northern, and walleye. A complete list of the

Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club 43rd Annual Fishing Derby winners are as follows:

Ice fishers made their way back to shore to hear the winners for the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club 43rd Annual Fishing Derby, which ended at 3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

Wallyeye

1st place with the only walleye – Radley Suess (4 oz)

Northern

1st Place Northern – Roman Braulick (9lbs 2 oz)

2nd Place Northern – Diane Eckstein (7lbs 9 oz)

A 1954 Cessna single engine airplane landed on the ice for the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club 43rd Annual Fishing Derby on Sleepy Eye Lake this weekend.

3rd Place Northern – Scott Brinkman (7lbs 7 oz)

Bass

1st Place Bass with the only Bass – Calvin Sellner (4 lbs 7 oz)

Crappie

1st Place Crappie – Alison Fromm (15 oz)

2nd Place Crappie – Danny Drexler (14 oz)

3rd Place Crappie – Kyla Hoffman (13 oz)

Sunfish

1st Place Sunfish – Tyler Sander (14 oz)

2nd Place Sunfish – Kyle Steffen (9oz)

3rd Place Sunfish – Haden Peterson (8oz)

Perch

1st Place Perch – Isaah Myhre (8oz)

2nd Place Perch – Nolan Braulick (7 oz)

3rd Place Perch – Jack Stoner (6 oz)

“This all started forty years ago with ten guys in the club; they said they wanted to have a fishing contest, and it got bigger from there,” Huiras said. “We used to have the whole thing down here on the ice, the concessions everything, and people would come down here for it, but then some folks didn’t want to walk on the ice, so we started having the raffle and all that up on shore. Last year, there was no ice, so no fishing contest, but we still had the raffle and everything else lakeside. This is the biggest money maker of the year for us.”

“Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club donates to different organizations like FFA, to the city and to the parks. We donated to the firemen in Sleepy Eye and got them new suits.”

Ice fishing hole on Lake Sleepy Eye drilled this Sunday at the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club 43rd Annual Fishing Derby.