I've been thinking about this for a little while, so I have a few thoughts...
I've also never been in an ice fishing 'tourney' so I'm not so sure how you would judge a winner. I have personally never really caught a limit of anything other than pickerel while ice fishing, and when I ice fish, I usually target different species (tip ups for bass, pickerel, pike or salmon and while those are going, I usually try to jig up panfish). I don't think you should limit it to just bass. Perhaps do different categories and biggest fish of each wins something.
Can't tell what the turnout would be, so I think you should just scrap the whole team thing and do everyman for themselves, 5 lines each (tip ups or jig poles)...
Live bait definitely...never heard of anyone putting a lure on a tip up!
I don't really know about time of day and ice fishing, as it seems people catch fish all day...I would suggest getting there closer to 7 or 730 to set up and a start time of 8 ???
I don't think there should be a time limit for each spot...try to choose a good spot in the beginning
then move if it;s not working.
No limit on auger or # of holes (as long as you're not making holes all over the lake!); I'm sure some people have power augers and no hand auger and vice versa
I was also thinking of scrapping the whole tournament idea, and just do a gathering, because it would be difficult to judge a winner. Could do a simple biggest fish of the day 5 bucks a guy or something or another option could be just throwing 5 bucks in a pot and getting a bunch of food/beer and just hang out! I have a Coleman stove I could bring, and then everyone could just mill around and 'visit' people during the day and then maybe have a meeting time for some food.
We should also get a list of spots going, we can start some ideas, probably put it in the Ice Fishing section, so people start looking on there, as there will probably be more posts coming up on there soon!
Just some thoughts...
- Volume (Ted)