Wawa Ice Fishing Derby a Sold Out Success!

Mar 6, 2017 @ 08:14

The 26th Annual Wawa Ice Fishing Derby was a great success! Sold out with 1400 tickets, organizers were pleased with the reception of the new format. For the first time, there were prizes for each lake, and the winner was the largest sport fish, independent of the species. The prizes were only awarded to the top six fish on each lake. There were lake trout, whitefish, pike, walleye and a brook trout entered. Of the top nine fish, 6 were lake trout, 2 were pike and one walleye.

 

The weekend began with the registration, and the draws for extra prizes that had been donated. Winners had to be present to win their prize.

 

 

Saturday, the weather was beautiful and lots and lots of anglers could be seen out on Wawa and Hawk Lake if you were out for a drive. Fish were coming in throughout the afternoon to the delight of the attendees at the Michipicoten Memorial Community Centre.

 

Later that evening the registration draw prizes were drawn after welcoming speeches by Mayor Ron Rody and Rotary Youth Exchange Student Celine Mischke from Herzogenaurach, Germany.

 

 

Celine drew the winning tickets from the barrel stirred by Derby Official Shayne Wardrop. Residents of Wawa were big winners, five tickets were drawn to win $1000 each: Mark Toffner, Jana Strouhlova, Denis Valiere, Derek  Bradley, Gilbert Legace all of Wawa.

 

The winner of this year’s top registration prize of $30,000 is Pauline Neyland. In former years, Pauline would have won a pickup truck, the traditional prize. After the draws, the arena was the scene of a dance, with music provided by Nuit.

 

 

 

Sunday began out bright and sunny, but by lunchtime, the weather had changed. It was now cloudy and there were brief spurts of snow. The fish didn’t seem to mind, they were hungry.

Many fish when they were cleaned still had undigested minnows in their stomachs. Chayse Penno who inspected and cleaned all the fish during the derby weekend, let every angler know what their fish was eating. Chayse was also the creator of the lovely steel roses for sale at the weigh-in station.

 

Finally it was time to give out the prizes for the winners. As reported earlier, the top six sport fish caught on one of the three lakes (Hawk, Wawa and Manitowik Lake) were prize winners. The winner had their choice of prizes, in order of ranking. 1st prize took their choice, and so on down the line. There were a couple of delays as some anglers were not present to choose their prize. Happily, one was reachable by phone with only a short delay, and the other two had left their choice of prize with the Derby Committee.

 

Winners of the 2017 Wawa Ice Fishing Derby are:

	Wawa Lake			Hawk Lake			Manitowik Lake
1	7.03 Lake Trout	Michael Brown		15.97 Pike	Jo-anne Chartrand		10.16 Pike	Sylvain Bernard (Dubreuilville)
2	6.38 Lake Trout	Jamie (Brett) Robinson (Wawa)		11.03 Walleye	Bonnie White		9.50 Lake Trout	Heather Gagnon (Dubreuilville)
3	6.16 Lake Trout	Devon Spooner		10.31 Lake Trout	Kris Bain (Hawk Junction)		9.26 Lake Trout	Chad Schellekens
4	6.09 Lake Trout	Anders Dereski (Wawa)		7.46 Walleye	Curtis White		9.05 Pike	Norm Savoie
5	5.63 Lake Trout	Colin Gallant		6.65 Pike	Shane Corbeil		8.63 Lake Trout	Robert Elliott (Wawa)
6	5.35 Lake Trout	Kristan Washburn		6.05 Pike	Tyler Smith		8.21 Pike	Tristan Tuarze
7	5.34 Lake Trout	Tom Moore (Wawa)		5.63 Pike	Jamie Cousineau		6.83 Lake Trout	James Ruffo
8	5.24 Lake Trout	Carl Case (Wawa)		5.34 Pike	Ashley Fernandez		6.48 Lake Trout	Wayne Barill
9	4.37 Whitefish	Mike Sim		4.82 – Pike	Christine Hiebert		6.23 Lake Trout	Jacob Grey
10	4.11 Lake Trout	Gilles Begin (Wawa)		4.63 Lake Trout	Wayne Ruff		6.20 Lake Trout	Terry Shewfelt