Crystal Lake Ice Fishing Derby!

Yesterday I helped out at the Crystal Lake Ice Fishing Derby in Gray Maine. It was awesome! There were thousands of people hanging out and a couple hundred fishing. There was about 12-18" of ice. A bunch of different media personnel were there filming from National Geographic, Northwoods Law, and others. The derby gave out some awesome prizes including a Ford Raptor truck. The event was organized perfectly and everybody had a great time. The food was awesome and I finally tried a red snapper (hotdog). There were a bunch of families that came out with no gear or fishing experience and we hooked them up pretty sweet. That part was really fun. We handed out 200 free tip ups to kids and helped them set them up. Apparently jigging was the way to go though as I was told from the people who caught the most fish. Jigging swedish pimples worked the best. I'm just going to dump the pics here, enjoy:

My view as the sun came up.

Some kids with a nice trout.

Red snapper.

I ate well!

Fish were donated to Hunters Feeding the Hungry.

One of the kids leading fish.

The leaderboard later in the day. Notice the big nasty eel. I saw 3 of them brought in around 3' long.

Hundreds of snowmobiles!

One of the Fish and Game mascots.

An awesome old snow mobile that still ran great. I have no idea how old.

I got to the derby at 4:45am and got home about 3:30pm so it wasn't as long of a day as I expected. I would have stayed until dark if the festivities hadn't finished at 2:00pm. When I got home the animals were in rare form:

Bed Time!