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Posts: 21
| The Chicagoland Muskie Hunters (Muskies Inc Chapter 03) will again be hosting the 3rd Annual Lady of the Lake Muskie Tournament on beautiful Lake Geneva, WI. The tournament will be held on Saturday, October 22, 2022 from 7:30 AM until 4:00 PM. I’m happy to announce that we already have 26 boats registered so far this year. It appears that we are well on our way to exceeding last years 41 boat field. All proceeds raised by this tournament will go directly towards the stocking of Leech Lake strain Muskies into Lake Geneva via our chapter’s Dean Rosset Stocking Program. This is truly a burgeoning Muskie fishery, which has been stocked with Wisconsin strain Muskies since 2010. According to the Wisconsin DNR, due to the large cisco forage base, these fish are growing at a tremendous rate with numerous 50+ in fish being caught over the past couple of years.
We are excited to announce that we will have an awards dinner this year, a short distance away at the Lake Lawn Resort in Delevan, WI. The cash bar will be open at 5:00 PM, with a buffet dinner planned to start at 5:30 PM. In addition to awards ceremony, we will be conducting a couple of fundraising raffles. The main raffle will offer prizes valued in excess of $4000 including some great prizes donated by our tournament sponsors. Prizes include lodging for two on Lake Vermilion, A full day guide trip, lots and lots of lures, landing nets, terminal tackle as well as other Muskie gear. The second raffle will be a 50/50 split the pot for those of you that already have enough Muskie gear (Although I say that you can never have enough Muskie gear). Again, all proceeds from the raffles will go directly back into the fishery through our stocking program.
We will again be using the FishDonkey app to manage this year’s tournament based on its successful use last year. For those of you not familiar with the FishDonkey App, it allows participants to register for the tournament and pay online. On the day of the tournament, it provides anti-cheating technology for recording your catch and provides a live leaderboard with real-time updates throughout the day. The FishDonkey App is available for Android and iPhone smartphones. For more information about FishDonkey, go to https://www.fishdonkey.com/.
Registration is easy. Just download the FishDonkey app to your smartphone, select “Fish in a Tournament”, then search “2022 Lady of the Lake Muskie Tournament”. Follow the steps to register.
The tournament details are:
• Entry fee is $220 per two-person team, plus a $10 FishDonkey service fee.
• Prize Payout: 1st Place - $2,500, 2nd Place - $1,500, 3rd Place - $1,000, 4th Place - $750, 5th Place - $500, plus a $750 Big Fish Pool (All prize amounts based on a full 75-boat field)
• You can launch your boat anywhere you want on Lake Geneva.
• Boats will leave in numerical order from our Williams Bay takeoff point.
• Tournament hours are 7:30 AM – 4:00 PM.
• Tournament rules can be accessed on the FishDonkey app as well as the Chicagoland Muskie Hunters website tournament page.
So give it a try. It's sure to be a fun event. Contact tournament director Drew Matusek at (847) 849-7406 or [email protected] if you have any questions regarding this year’s tournament. We hope to see you there.
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Posts: 21
| As of today we now have 33 boats registered for the tournament. At this rate we should have a pretty good size field this year. | |
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Posts: 21
| We are now up to 40 boats with 27 days until the tournament. There are many new boats registered that did not participate last year, so we fully expect to hit our goal of at least 60 boats. We are also starting to see some well known Muskie sticks that have committed including some familiar YouTubers. This should be a really fun event. | |
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Posts: 21
| As of Saturday October 15th we are up to 53 boats in the tournament. We expect to see more entries between now and Saturday the 22nd. If you are interested in fishing in this tournament you should enter ASAP. All you need to do to register is to download the FishDonkey app onto your smartphone. Then hit “Fish in a Tournament”. From there search “Lady of the Lake” and our tournament will come up. Then just follow the directions to register. If you still have any questions, please reach out to me at [email protected] or Drew Matusek at [email protected]. | |
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Posts: 21
| We ended up with 56 boats on Saturday, which is really amazing considering we only had 29 boats just two years ago when we starting this tournament. It was an unseasonably warm day with a pretty good wind out of the south, and bluebird skies. That presented us with a really tough bite. A total of three fish were caught with the big fish measuring 39.5 inches. We had a 2nd place tie with two teams posting a 33.25-inch Muskie. A number of other boats reported contacting fish.
Following the tournament we held the awards dinner at the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, WI. Here is how the awards were distributed:
1st Place - Derek Bloomquist and Andrew Schiera 39.5" (Big Fish Prize)
2nd Place (Tie) - Daniel Kuesis and Spence Petros 33.25"
2nd Place (Tie) - Rick Miscinski and Scott Urquhart 33.25"
For 4th and 5th place we drew boat numbers to award those prizes.
Following the awards ceremony, we held a raffle with over 40 prizes valued at $5000. We want to thank all of our tournament sponsors for their generous donations that made this raffle a great success. We also had a 50/50 raffle that paid out a nice cash prize. All of the proceeds that were raised with this tournament will go toward the stocking of Leech Lake strain muskies in Lake Geneva.
I want to thank everyone who participated this year and hope to see everyone back for next year. We are hoping that we can grow this event and push that total well past 60 boats. Speaking of next year, the exact date hasn’t been set just yet, but it will be sometime in October of 2023. Stay tuned for details to be posted.
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Location: Northern Illinois | Great turn out. Tough bite to say the least. | |
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