JoCo DU Benefit at Hillsdale Lake, Dec 24 2016

   Winter Tournaments here in Kansas are always a gamble, even at the best of times. This one was no different, it seemed all the gremlins were bored and felt like playing games with us. Icy roads, Icy ramps, Ice on the Lake, cold natured Outboards and so on. After working through all that and getting on with business at hand, I was kinda worried with the ice covering a few of the spots I had planned on fishing. This was only the 2nd time I had ever put my boat in Hillsdale and didn't have much to go on.
     After beating a dead horse for about 2 hours and only coming up with a single 11 inch fish, I noticed a crowd of locals, about 7 boats, fishing a cove not 200 yrds from the ramp we put in at. After idling a bit closer to them I noticed they were onto one serious Crappie bite. After noticing that one of the waypoints I had saved was open I pulled my Ranger 518 VX up to the brushpile and with the push of a button, set the parking brake with my Motorguide XI 5 and got to work. 
     After dialing in the color, the Crappie were coming over the side of the boat every few minutes and ended up catching in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 fish, most of which were keepers but not really any significant size to them, mainly 12 inch clones, but with the way the morning started, I was more than happy with them. 
      Upon heading back to the ramp, We got about weighing in the days catch. My Partner for the day Kalin Canton got about sorting out our best 7 fish, We managed to put 5.04 on the board after having 2 of our better fish die on us and replacing them with a couple of 11's with our best fish only being a .81.
       The Team of Ryan German and Greg Graham found the better fish and made a clean sweep of it, Taking 1st Place and Winning Big Fish bringing in 6.51 overall with their Big Fish coming in at 1.09, with the Team of Frank Haidusek and Patric Mitchell taking 2nd with 5.47 and a Big Fish of .82.

1st Place- Ryan German/ Greg Graham- 6.51/ BF-1.09
2nd Place- Frank Haidusek/ Patric Mitchell- 5.47/ BF-0.82
3rd Place- Joe Bragg/ Kalin Canton- 5.04/ BF- 0.81