The ice fishing begins on Nov. 4 at Alum Creek Lake.

No ice? No problem.

Ice Fish Ohio will hold a series of dock fishing tournaments at Alum Creek and C. J. Brown Reservoir in November.

“There is no casting allowed,” said David Hoheisel, founder and director of the organization. “After Oct. 31, the state parks allow people to fish off of the docks in their marinas, so that’s what we do.

“Everything is vertical presentation, just as if we are fishing on ice. Some of us prefer to fish with our ice equipment (short poles), but in these tournaments long poles are OK. They just can’t cast them,” he added.

Once there is safe ice, the tournaments will move from the docks to the ice.

“Even if we have thin ice, we will continue the dock tournaments,” Hoheisel said. “We’ll just poke holes and fish.”

The entry fee per tournament is $15 per person. The fee is returned to the person catching the biggest crappie (1/3), the largest walleye/saugeye (1/3) and the remaining third goes toward operation of the organization’s Web site, icefishohio.com/index.php.

The website is used as a bulletin board, a place for people to post fish stories, check conditions at several lakes and keep up with other members. He said there are about 1,000 members.

Tournament check-in starts at 7:30 a.m. each Sunday in November. All tournaments are 8 a.m.-1 p.m.: Nov. 4 at Alum Creek marina docks; Nov. 11 at C.J. Brown marina docks; Nov. 18 at Alum Creek; Nov. 25 at C.J. Brown; Dec. 2 at Alum Creek.

In January, the club has a kids tournament at Cranberry Resort on Indian Lake.

“We always have fun with these events until safe ice.” Hoheisel said. “It’s a good way to meet other people who enjoy ice fishing. Some of us find it rather addictive.”

The tournaments are open to the public. Just show up and sign up at 7:30 a.m.. You can visit the website for more information.

Area men enjoy fish feeding frenzy

Here’s a little story about some real fishing fun: On Oct. 24, two retired gentlemen, Michael Sammons of Dayton and John Stewart of Huber Heights, went out on the Miss Cindy, a Lake Erie head boat based in Port Clinton in the summer, but out of Vermilion in October.

“There were 28 other people on board, so it was at capacity,” said Sammons. “We anchored for the first time at about 9:20 (a.m.). We caught zilch. We tried three other stops and the boat maybe had 15 fish in the box.”

Doesn’t sound like a very exciting trip, does it? But wait, there’s more:

“We dropped anchor at our fifth stop at about 12:30,” he continued. “Before I could get my line in the water, a man four people down from me pulled in a double. In short, in an hour and five minutes the boat had 900 perch. It was an absolute feeding frenzy. The man to my right had the big catch of the day, a 15 ½-inch yellow perch.”

For Sammons and Stewart, their 60-fish limit weighed a little over 22 pounds.

“I have hit my limit the last three times out on this boat, but never in this fashion.” Sammons added.

I know there are plenty of fishing stories out there and we can’t print them all, but I liked this one because it is such a success story and because the same thing happened to me while fishing with charter captain Dick Horstman a few years ago.