Grub from the World’s Largest Ice Fishing Tourney

This story incorporates photographs from the 2023 tourney. This 12 months’s event is likely to be held on Feb. 1, 2025.

Although all of the virtually 9,000 people of the thirty third Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza presumably signed as a lot as catch fish on in the end in late January, most will let you recognize it’s really an occasion to get collectively. (And for an excellent set off too: The annual match in Nisswa, Minnesota, raised better than $98,000 for native charities in 2022.)

“The fishing side ain’t all that good,” says Tucker Vetsch (above), who has attracted consideration for his taxidermy buck hat. Although the 18-year-old positioned second common in 2022, he didn’t catch a single fish on Saturday. “I’m going for the experience and all that goes on, reasonably than the exact fishing.”

For most individuals, that options grilling out on the ice, sipping half-frozen beers with outdated buddies, fishing with the kids, snagging raffle prizes, and, generally, catching a walleye or perch.

“It started out with my grandfather, my dad, and me as solely a yearly issue, nonetheless as we purchased older and the friendship between the fellows who went in the marketplace purchased stronger, all of us made it a staple yearly,” says Ronald Enrooth of his highschool buddies. The Enrooth crew has attended the match since 2006 and has slowly turned the weekend event proper right into a full-blown journey, usually heading there as early as a result of the Wednesday sooner than the tourney weekend. “We go up, we eat, we play enjoying playing cards, we snowmobile. We merely profit from the northern Minnesota atmosphere. After which we fish.”

So throughout the true spirit of the Jaycees Extravaganza, proper right here’s a check out among the many meals and drinks that power the funnest ice-fishing tourney on the earth.