An Exciting Period on Mille Lacs

FISHING TOURNAMENTS DRAW THOUSANDS
Last weekend's fishing tournaments on Mille Lacs brought thousands to the lake. We have yet to receive the list of winners from the Perch Extravaganza at Hunter's Point Resort or the Duck's Umlimited Event in Garrison Bay, but it's safe to declare the Mille Lacs area an overall winner. Despite some early snowy and windy weather, the tournaments enjoyed sun-filled days and from what I could see driving around the lake to observe, literally thousands of cars were on the ice taking part. Garrison Bay was filled with vehicles for the noon-3 pm fishing event there. Area businesses had to have felt the volume of all these customers in the area. A great weekend overall for Mille Lacs.

GARRISON RACING THIS WEEKEND
The Garrison Commercial Club isn't about to let a string of two straight weekends of great business come to an end. This weekend, they promote WSA Snowmobile Ice Racing; Kids 120 Snow Cross; Stud Club Motorcycle/ATV Ice Racing; Vintage Snowmobile Racing; Vintage Snowmobile Show; Hardwater Ice Racing. With a great weather forecast, it should be an awesome time in Garrison this weekend, making Mille Lacs a great destination for folks again.

FISH HOUSES OFF THE ICE BY MIDNIGHT MARCH 2
The DNR has given Mille Lacs fisher folks until Midnight, March 2nd to get your permanent ice houses off the lake. If you occupy the houses from midnight to 6 am you can stay in them beyond that time, but they must be occupied. Wheel houses can come on and off during the day beyond the second as can portables. With the ice season coming to close, many resorts started pulling houses off the ice Monday and will continue through this week and weekend. Our ice fishing poll indicates that about nine percent of people that fish thought the season was better than average. Sixteen percent thought it was average. And 49 percent thought it was below average. Twenty six percent of those polled hadn't fished Mille Lacs this winter. See our countdown clock on the home page of Make It Mille Lacs.com. As of this writing, there are only 73 days and 12 hours to the open water walleye opener on Mille Lacs! With the heavy snows we got early this winter, we may see a raised water level on the Big Pond this spring. I am predicting ice out for April 24th this year.

IZATYS: ALL QUIET ON THE SOUTH SHORE
Despite a quick first offer that was rejected by Commerce Bank in early January, Izatys Resort continues to sit idled as spring draws near. We continue to hear that there are three buyers interested but the recent poor economy has tightened capital investment. The resort has been mothballed since early October 2007, despite the opening of Blackbrook Golf Course and the Links Lodge for a mild stretch from June through August 2008. As you may recall, Izatys went for rougly 3 million at an auction last April, only to be rejected by bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher. With 130 lakeside townhomes and 67 Village at Izatys Timeshares, a huge market of potential customers awaits new ownership.



5th ANNUAL KITE CROSSING MARCH 7-8th

The Fifth Annual Mille Lacs Kite Crossing is once again shaping up to be one of the biggest and most dynamic snowkite events in the country. Last year, the Kite Crossing became the first kiting event to surpass 100 registrants. With many of the fastest snowkiters in the world being from the local community, the challenge continues to draw from across the country.

We have attached the Notice of Challenge in a PDF format. It should provide all the necessary information. The only variation to the Notice of Challenge is that we are offering a hooded version of the sweatshirt for $8 more, but only for those registering by the March 2nd deadline. We will be accepting electronic registration by e-mail. If you have registered for a Fleet 8 event in the past two years, just provide your name, category, shirt size and preferred e-mail address for receiving Updates. You can pay by Paypal by going to the Fleet 8 website. The PayPal button is a Donate button and has a fixed amount of $30 until midnite Monday, then the $40 late fee goes into effect. Guest fees and additional shirt charges will have to be paid at check-in time. You can find all this by scrolling down the page at http://fleet8.com/news/.

Riders of all levels are encouraged to attend. Come out, meet riders from around the area, share the stoke, check out some new gear and learn some new moves. We would also like to thank our hosts at the Y-Club and around Garrison as well as our loyal sponsors