Fun Fishapalooza Facts

[Ferny]

53 Strikemaster Solo augers and <70 guy's drilled 12,000 holes in 2 hours! WOW! I was seriously impressed at how fast they were. We had a hard time keeping up with fuel on some of these guy's The Forest Lake VFW sold out of raffle tickets raising $30,000 for charity. Also all beer proceeds going to VFW charity adding to the $30,000!

1st fish and last fish weighed in won a fur hat from the fur hat guy. Recycled Fish on Ice handed out 4000+ fish bags.

Tons of lures from Northland Tackle were given out and a full tackle box to all the kids who weighed any fish. Northland even slipped a few full big tackle boxes into the weigh in tent during the contest for random winners. That didn't go unnoticed, Thanks Steve!!! Santa even dropped off hundreds of Matchbox cars for the tykes also. I think he did this on his own, Thanks Santa? Several Ziploc bags full of the coolest fish shaped depth bombs ever. Some painted exactly like fish and some said Fishapalooza were given out. I even gave my pumkinseed D bomb away to the guy in the crowd at the end of the contest who came from the farthest distance...Cali. while calming the crowd down at the end. Hundreds of caribiner flashlights handed out to the kids. Hunt Fish Feed from the Sportsmans Channel ended up with 40lbs of fillets donated to feed the homeless yesterday. 615 fish weighed in total. People were waiting at 9 a.m. to buy walleye on a stick. I even handed out 30 of my custom wooden Fishapalooza rod holders randomly...well maybe cute women ended up with more but I'm not quite sure Who can forget the UV Vodka and Ice Hole samples, yummy!

All those contestants on ice with no medical emergencies! Whew!

The Bikini Ice Fishing Team was at the Ice Bash Friday night and on the ice. There were also several sponsors and seminars at the Ice Bash and a lot of raffle prizes too, Thanks Teeg!

All of this was done with less than 200 volunteers which included 30+ from the US Navy Sea Cadets in Forest Lake. When we left the ice at sundown it was all cleaned up! Thanks to the Boy Scouts and volunteers.

There is a mountain of work that goes on unnoticed behind the scenes.

You can all be proud to be Minnesotans helping Minnesotans!

Thank You to all of the volunteers and wonderful sponsors and contestants. It wouldn't be Fishapalooza without you!

Ferny.

[PierBridge]

Fantastic Job Ferny.

Glad to see this Fund raiser up and running top notch again!

Thanks to all!

[harvey lee]

This contest was very well run. I had a great time and didn't even win a prize. Good to see a few youngsters won some prizes.

[Zoob]

What an outstanding read and event. My hat is off to you, Ferny.

[STEVENS1920]

Great work and a big thank you to all volunteers! I had a great time, and like Harvey, didn't win a thing. Any guess as to the turn out?

[hopeforfish]

This was a great event, by any chance did anyone else meet Chico from Rocherster? he was a hoot on the bus ride afterwards.