Team Extreme Tournament at Brushy Creek Lake

Brushy Creek Lake was the second and final stop on the 2016 Team Extreme Ice Fishing Circuit
 in Iowa.  Mark Anderson and I once again competed and put in a few days of practice to try and locate the good sized bluegills and crappies that we would need come weigh-in time.  Brushy Creek is probably the most unique lake in the state.  There is a lot of water deeper than 40 feet and the entire lake is pretty covered with standing trees.  Throw in some rock piles, steep banks and a river channel that swings in and out all throughout the lake.  To say the least, there are so many places to look and find fish it can be overwhelming.  With a couple hundred holes later and countless hours working with the Vexilar we were able to narrow things down.
We covered all the aforementioned areas and found a few that were holding fish.  We put the plan together for tournament day and we started off great.  A limit of eight crappies were caught fairly quickly included a couple around the 10-inch mark.  We were off to a good start.  We decided to head to our bluegill area and we managed a limit of eight bluegills, but the size wasn't what we were expecting.  We decided to run and gun for awhile and "quick-hit" some areas to hopefully find some eager biting fish.  This had some limited success and we did upgrade a few fish in the last couple hours of the event.  We ended up in 5th place for the day which was a disappointment, but we got through another tough event and

some lessons were learned, and really, that is what tournament fishing is all about.  

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