By Steve Weisman
For the past three decades, the second weekend in September has been a special fishing weekend. It’s been the annual Pocahontas Iowa Great Lakes Fishing Tournament (PIGLIFT). It’s a three-partner fishing tournament where one of the partners must have lived at one time in Pocahontas. PIGLIFT was started 34 years ago by Howard Pattee (a Pocahontas native), and 32 years ago, one of my Estherville teaching colleagues, John Amick (who grew up in Pocahontas) asked another colleague, Bill Elling and me to join him in this tournament.
So, here we were the weekend of September 10-11, 2022 fishing in our 32nd PIGLIFT tournament. It was kind of a bittersweet tournament because Howard had made known to all participants that this was his last year of organizing the tournament. We three could totally understood. We knew how much work Howard went to so that it was a first class “in demand” tournament with specially designed shirts and caps, a special supper at McKeen’s in Spirit Lake, great door prizes and awesome prizes for the top teams in two divisions: walleye and panfish.
He even made it so that during the two-day tournament, you could only win a division once on that weekend. Over the years, Pure Fishing, Scheels and Kabele’s Trading Post became annual business sponsors, along with several individuals who donated cash to help with the cost of prizes.
So, with Howard’s decision in mind, we three decided this might be our final year, too…a good way to go out, we hoped in a blaze of glory-LOL!
A little history
In 1989, a total of 13 teams participated, and it grew to many years being over 30 teams, with the most ever at 34 teams. We learned early on that our niche would be the panfish division. We tried one year in the walleye division and with what we felt was a decent five-fish weight, we were a distant 7th! I knew all along that we had a better chance in the panfish division.
For 34 years, Big Spirit Lake was THE Poky teams’ walleye lake. It kind of became my motto that when the Poky teams hit Big Spirit, they’d figure out the walleye bite. Most of the time it was pulling cranks in the basin, and the Poky teams were among the best at doing that.
Until a couple of years ago, walleyes were kept in livewells and then brought to the weigh-in site, weighed and released. For the past two years, however, it’s become a catch, measure, photo and release tournament…definitely easier on the fish, and slot fish can be counted because they are released. So, instead of weight, it’s become a total length tournament.
Walleye results
Well, guess what! In 2022, only five walleyes were measured on Big Spirit in two days of fishing. Instead, the bite was on West Okoboji. Although there weren’t lots of five-fish limits measured, the top two teams on Saturday caught their limit. The team of Steve Hammer, Marty Cundiff and Ed Vierow had a five fish limit totaling 106.5 inches with a 22.75 incher for their largest. The second place team of Travis Shimon and Austin Kakacek totaled 101.5 inches with a 22.5 incher for their largest.
Sunday was a much tougher day with no teams catching a five-walleye limit. The team of Chad Peterson, Tony Stearns and Darren Stearns measured four walleyes at 75 inches, while the second place team of Brad Cundiff and Todd Olson measured 65 inches.
Best luck occurred pulling crankbaits with snap weights attached to the line to target suspended walleyes over deep water.
Panfish results
Since we began fishing the panfish division, our team has won the title 12 times and finished second 3 other times. Those all occurred before 2015. Our staple was either bluegills on West Okoboji or when the huge jumbo perch were going on Big Spirit in the 1990’s. However, since 2015, the bite had changed and the East Okoboji and West Okoboji crappie populations had exploded. I remained stubborn, and each year we caught nice 8-9 inch bluegills, but they are no match in weight for a 10+ inch crappie.
Finally, last year we changed to fishing for crappies, but as with everything there is a learning curve of where and how. Last year we got blown away. We had good crappies, but we were a couple of pounds off.
Then came 2022. The biggest crappies were coming on West Okoboji out in front of Atwell Point, while we had also caught some in Haywards Bay, Egalharve Point and along Fedora shoreline. All of the action was in 11-17 feet of water either anchoring and casting a 1/8-ounce to 1/16-ounce jig tipped with a plastic tail, or trolling the same baits about .8 to 1.0 mph. We preferred trolling because we could cover a lot more water.
During prefishing, we would try a spot, locate the fish and leave. On Friday, we had 11-12” crappies. Then Saturday came, and the bite was much tougher. We caught a lot of 8” to 9” crappies. We ended up catching a bunch of 10” and one 11” crappie. It was kind of cool that there were four of the teams fishing in the same area. However, we didn’t feel that our weight would place very high. Our total weight was 5 pounds 15 ounces. Low and behold, it beat the second place team of Joe Bauer, Charlie Brown and Tom Hoover by 2 ounces!
Since we couldn’t fish the same division on Sunday, we decided to go after big bluegills and found them off of Pillsbury Point in 25 feet of water. Best bait was a – get this – Minnesota Viking purple Shucks Jigger Minnow tipped with a Belgian worm. We caught enough for a couple of good meals for each of us with 44 bluegills measuring from 8” to 9”. We were lucky on Saturday, because the team of Cole Dickey, Dean Weydert and Nate Kajewski weighed in 6 pounds 12 ounces on Sunday!
At Saturday night’s banquet and supper, we sat back and enjoyed our 32 years of camaraderie with so many other teams, and we got to be part of the round of applause for PIGLIFT director, Howard Pattee!
Reflecting on the 34 years of being PIGLIFT director, Pattee, noted, “It’s been a bitter sweet finale. So many memories and so many friends made over the years. There is a good chance we will have PIGLIFT 35 as I have a few that have approached me suggesting that this it too good of a thing to let it die. So I anticipate working with two, three or four guys explaining the steps that I have usually taken to prepare for tournament day, and hopefully we can keep the tournament afloat.”
Oh, and that Saturday night, we picked up our prizes: three Fenwick rod/reel combos valued at $200 each and three $50 Scheels gift certificates. I guess you could say we did go out in “our own little blaze of glory!” Happy Trails!
Saturday night’s banquet was a time for teams to share their appreciation for the efforts of longtime PIGLIFT organizer, Howard Pattee. Here, he takes a moment to pose with his son, Mitch Pattee (R).
A livewell of nice crappies.
Todd Olson
Tony Stearns
Darren Stearns
Brad Cundiff
Banquet logo at McKeen’s
