The World’s Largest Ice Fishing Tournament
Every January, thousands of anglers descend on a frozen lake in Brainerd, Minnesota, armed with augers, tip-ups, and enough layers to outfit a small Arctic expedition. The mission? Catch the biggest fish and drive home in a brand-new pickup truck. It’s part fishing derby, part frozen carnival, and all Minnesota.
We were there on assignment for Field & Stream, documenting the madness that is the Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza—officially the largest ice fishing tournament in the world. You can feel the scale of it before you even get to the lake: traffic backed up with trucks hauling portable shacks, snowmobiles zipping across side roads, and the smell of camp stoves firing up at 8 a.m.
Out on the ice, it felt like we were working inside a snow globe that someone kept shaking. Wind howled across the lake, picking up powder and flinging it sideways. Snowflakes pelted our lenses. Every time I turned around, it looked like the landscape had rearranged itself—shacks appearing and disappearing like mirages, flags whipping in new directions.
But that’s part of the joy of photographing something like this. It’s not just about the fish (though someone did walk away with a truck). It’s about the frozen beards, the 50,000-gallon thermoses of coffee, the kids cheering as they pull up palm-sized perch like they’ve just landed a whale. It’s the absurdity of a thousand people voluntarily sitting on buckets in a whiteout because, well, this is what we do here.
There’s something deeply Minnesotan about it: rugged, communal, a little ridiculous, and kind of beautiful. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
