Ice fishing tournament anglers brave variable and harsh winter conditions to catch the biggest panfish in one- and two-day events. The tournament angler’s approach to ice fishing is often unconventional. These hard-core men and women eschew creature comforts for a raw, ground-level, grind-it-out approach. But their methods are refined and purpose-driven. Their unrelenting dedication results in catching lots of fish and sampling the largest fish these premiere fisheries have to offer. Spending time with these ice angling fanatics reveals a great deal about what makes them successful, and what casual ice anglers can learn from tournament professionals.
The ice fishing tournament veteran pair of Minnesota’s Ryan Hylla and Clayton Kettering have been consistently in the running for Team of the Year in Minnesota’s Ultimate Panfish League and the old North American Ice Fishing Circuit (NAIFC), as well as holding the title as the 2022 Frankie’s Minnesota State Panfish Champions. The duo met when they attempted their first tournament in the NAIFC together after finding each other in fishing forums. A dozen years later, the pair now fishes together with ease, coming to mutually agreed upon decisions often with an unspoken nod and the familiarity of lifelong friends. Their shared journey from tournament rookies to the team with a target on their back has been built on experience and know-how. Their method is one that casual anglers can model, and they often share their techniques and experience of how tournament anglers can help casual anglers catch more fish.

1. Prepare
A common theme for tournament anglers is the time they put into preparation for tournament day. “Scouting doesn’t start when you get to the lake and cut your first hole,” Hylla said. “There is so much good information on the Internet. Look back at the older forums, search in the archives. Search for that time of the year that you’re going to be on a waterbody. Those little things go a long ways. For example, we fished on Pokegama and we saw fish cribs on LiveScope. Well, we looked it up and found that the local sportsman’s club had a permit to install the cribs and they had put out a map at the local fair. We were able to track that map down and get the GPS locations. We won the tournament but you had critics saying that it was only won because we used LiveScope. Well, the truth is everyone had LiveScope, and to be honest, we used LiveScope very little that day. Most of our success was due to knowing where those cribs were and setting up camp.”
Scouting can come in many forms. Kettering says he and Hylla put a lot of time into looking at lake maps on the Navionics web app, looking at Department of Natural Resources’ lake reports, and scouring web pages and forums for clues. “We have a lot of work done before we ever set foot on the ice,” Kettering said. “Once you figure out a pattern, fishing becomes a lot easier. You find fish in one spot, then you look for something similar. Until you crack that code, it can be a struggle.”

2. Use and Trust Your Electronics
Proper use of electronics and utilizing them to their full potential is one way that ice tournament anglers ensure they are on the cutting edge of efficiency. Hylla drew an astute analogy of his tournament partner Kettering. “Clayton is a carpenter,” he said. “Each day he straps on a tool belt. Everything that is on that tool belt is there for a reason. As a tournament fisherman, you want to utilize every tool that you can. We’re using LiveScope to find fish and then we dial it in a little by scouting with the camera. We’re not even dropping a line when we use that camera, especially when scouting and prefishing. Those electronics will come in to play on tournament days, too. You get to an area where it’s a mixed bag. We need eight crappies and eight bluegills. I’ll run a camera and tell Clayton what I’m seeing so he can pick out the fish we are looking for.”
Tournament anglers gain proficiency with their electronics and their success makes for an easy sell to more casual anglers. Forward-facing sonar has become the way that anglers find schools of fish. LiveScope helps find fish, and helps anglers read fish and schools of fish for their reactions. Both Hylla and Kettering believe that LiveScope is merely showing you the spooky behavior of fish reacting to drilling, vehicle movements and footsteps, but now is the first time you can actually see it in real time.
Underwater cameras have their place for finding vegetation, scoping out lake bottom makeup, and positively verifying fish. But once you are on a school of fish, it’s all about reading and reacting using a flasher. The portability of a simple flasher beats the delay associated with putting down a forward-facing sonar transducer or a corded underwater camera. Flashers seal the deal for tournament champions.

All ice anglers need to understand their electronics. With enough practice, you can tell the size of a fish on a flasher, you can tell the size of a fish on a camera, and you can tell the size of the fish on your LiveScope. Being able to understand and utilize those electronics to your best advantage only comes with experience and time using your equipment. With Hylla and Kettering only needing 16 good bites to have a decent day at the scales, the duo needs to find and target the big fish, and using their electronics is how they sort out and hunt down the fish that will land them in the winner’s circle. Casual anglers can learn to take the same approach.
3. Stay or Go?
Ice anglers face a universal conundrum. Once set up on a spot, they must decide whether to stay or go. Tournament anglers deal with the same decision. “You learn something in every tournament you fish,” Clayton said. “There’s times you should have stayed longer and there are times when you should have left earlier. In tournament fishing, better than half of it is about decision making. It’s all about making the right decision at the right times. There will be times, for better or for worse, that you zigged when you should have zagged.”
Hylla and Kettering believe their experience together has given them a good feeling for when it’s time to move. It’s easy to move when there aren’t any or many fish around, but much harder to move when you’re catching fish and catching glimpses of larger fish working the area. “The events where we were successful,” recalled Hylla, “we ice trolled small areas and upgraded throughout the day. You either win or you learn in competitive fishing. And I’ve learned a lot more than I’ve won. Recapping tournaments is an important part of looking back on your decisions. Clayton and I live a ways apart. We’ll often call on the drive home to recap our decisions and moves. ‘What would you have done different?’ is what we ask. Even if you win a tournament, you’re still scrutinizing the decisions you make. It’s a continual improvement mindset.” The feedback loop is such a critical step that most casual anglers are missing. Keep a journal of your time on the ice and review where you went and what you tried.

4. Start Small
Hylla and Kettering see a lot of weekend anglers who are overgeared for panfish. “I see too many casual anglers using gear that is way too big, whether it is their rod, or their line, or their jigs,” Clayton revealed. “I show my buddies a 4mm tungsten jig. To me, that’s a normal-size ice jig. To most anglers, they think that thing is tiny. I think small is 3 or 2½mm. If you’re seeing fish down there and they aren’t biting, it’s not because they aren’t hungry. Our spoons are micro spoons, 1/32 or 1/64 ounce. We’re fishing tiny Clam Pinhead Pro spoons. Guys are telling me about 2-pound crappies and needing to upsize. What do you think they are eating? They are swimming through the basin just gorging themselves on small bugs. Your giant jig is not on the menu.”
Kettering recommends starting small, then moving in either direction with larger or smaller jigs. He says that it’s important to remember that in winter, fish are lethargic with slower metabolisms. Many times, Hylla and Kettering are triggering bites with a lot of work, force-feeding the fish and playing games to get their interest and draw out a bite. “You can have the nicest rod in the world,” Ryan said, “but if you have this heavy, coiled line, a fish could hit it and you wouldn’t even see or feel the bite. You don’t want to see line with more coils than Clayton’s beard.”
5. Expensive Gear Doesn’t Make It Better
Tournament anglers need gear that works in the harshest of conditions. While one might assume that means the most expensive gear, that’s rarely the case. Both Hylla and Kettering fish with inexpensive factory fishing rods and Schooley reels, preferring gear that doesn’t break and won’t freeze up. “The casual anglers are finally starting to listen to tournament anglers about the Schooley reels,” Ryan revealed. “You can buy 50 Schooleys for the price of a $100 inline. An inline and a Schooley are doing the same thing. But if I throw that same inline reel in a snowbank, I’ll pick it back up and it’s full of snow and slush and will freeze up. A Schooley won’t do that. The simplicity of the Schooley is so nice. You don’t have to worry about your drag failing. You look at a lot spinning reels, they don’t hold up in cold weather and they get really stiff. If it’s cold and your reel isn’t working, what good is it?”

“Nontournament anglers always complain that Schooleys reel up so slowly,” Kettering said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. We back all our Schooleys. You can use three-dimensional print fillers. You can use electrical tape or rubber bands to fill them. The bigger the arbor size, the more line you are taking off and putting on. As far as dropping, it doesn’t matter. The jig is only going to drop so fast in the water. You can’t put more line down to make it drop faster. Spinning, inline, Schooley reels — they all drop at the same rate. And on some inlines, you are having to slow them down so you don’t get backlashes. That means you are slowing down the fall and you don’t want to do that when fish are hot or fish are on the move.”
Hylla says that when you’re pulling a Schooley out, you get pretty good at knowing what each pull is and using that as your measure. When he gets on a school of fish and knows he’s pulling out line six times, he can do that repeatedly. But if an angler opens a spinning reel bail, the angler has no idea what is coming out or how far down that dropped jig is sinking.
Cheap rods that are tougher than dirt are the pair’s go-to sticks. Each man fishes with modified HT Ice Blues in light action, as well as Clam Jason Mitchell Meat Sticks. “An HT Ice Blue is 8 bucks and is dang near indestructible,” Clayton said. “It’s the rod the tightliners use, as well as most everyone who tournament fishes.”
Kettering spools up with 3-pound fluorocarbon when he fishes deeper than 20 feet since it sinks fastest. If he fishes in shallower water, he’ll drop monofilament in the same test weight to make his jig look more buoyant and so he can manipulate it better. Both men will downsize their line in clearer water, but it comes at a risk. Lighter line is more likely to break on hooksets, particularly for anglers with long hooksets.
Hylla and Kettering are always looking for an advantage, and not having to rebait hooks is a major fishing time preserver. “If you can add one more piece to attract a fish and convince it to bite,” Ryan said, “it’s worth it. A Panfish Plastics Chigger Fry plastic isn’t coming off. I’ve run days with the same plastic on a spoon, and if I don’t have to adjust it and it’s not slowing me down, it’s helping me catch more fish.”

Some tournament anglers are tightliners, which is often a misunderstood term amongst casual anglers. Tightliners are constantly moving their jigs, throwing subtle hops and pauses in their colored line that they watch against the white or silver background of their ice hole. They intently watch the line, looking for any pause or change that signifies the bite of a fish. Any small change automatically justifies a hookset. However, tightliners must keep their lines constantly buzzing. For Kettering and Hylla and a majority of tournament ice anglers, a hybrid approach of seeing and feeling bites is used. Tournament ice anglers watch line or use specialized indicators. For Hyalla and Kettering, nitinol spring bobbers and Russian mylar modified indicators are their go-to bite detection devices.
6. Modify Gear to Work for You
Tournament ice anglers are methodic with their gear selections and adaptations, but all modifications are done for a simple reason. They help catch more fish and are done for functionality. Kettering cuts off the foregrip on his Jason Mitchell Meat Sticks with split grips. The change allows him to palm and handle the rod and Schooley reel all in one hand. “Those rods have a great blank and the whole thing will fold over,” Kettering said. “Keep in mind that with Schooley reels, we don’t have drag short of how tight the nut on the spool is or how you palm the reel. You want a rod with a slow action that absorbs all the energy of the fish’s fight because we don’t have drags. With the HT Ice Blue rods, we cut down the tips on the light power rods and put an indicator on it. I don’t want the rod to be too soft for my jigging cadence to be transferred, so I’m taking that soft tip off that acts as a dampener, while still having a rod that folds easily.”
7. Leave Your Comfort Zone
Perhaps the most important thing that tournament ice anglers bring to each event is an adaptive mindset. By challenging themselves to try new techniques or fishing new waters, they grow as anglers. “You have to get yourself comfortable doing something you’re not accustomed to,” said Hylla. “We go to areas that we might not have ever fished before. We’ll go in and bring fish out and locals will wonder where we caught them. When we tell them where and how we got the fish, they are just amazed that we caught those fish in the middle of the day. It’s as if they are resigned to only catching those fish in one spot at a certain time. You can’t fish that way; you have to change things up.”

Most casual anglers get used to the comfort of heated ice shacks and leisurely waiting for fish. But to really catch fish, you have to embrace the chase, which isn’t the easiest on foul-weather days. Tournament angling is about “challenging yourself and asking what can you do to get better,” Hylla added. “Everybody learns from each other. Throughout the year, you’re going to learn just as much from me as I’m going to learn from you. Take all the tools and resources at your disposal and use them.”
Above all, both Kettering and Hylla recommend that anglers who want to catch more fish sign up for a tournament. Everyone had to fish in their first tournament and learn from others along the way. It forces anglers out of their comfort zones. “I’ve never met someone from tournament circles that wasn’t willing to share what they learned,” Ryan said. “Now, we’re not going to give you waypoints and share lake spots, but we all help each other out for what is working. Prefishing, during, or after — we are all there to help each other out. Whether you win or lose, finish top or finish near the back, you’ll walk away learning something new. Most of the really good fishermen started somewhere, took baby steps, and grew out of their shell.”
For ice anglers looking to grow their skills, an open mind and a fishing tournament are a great combination to getting an ice angling education. Reconnaissance, adaptability, triggering bites and finding the right fish will bring out your best as an angler.
“Honestly,” Hylla said, “it’s not one piece of the puzzle with tournament fishing, it’s wielding everything that is at your disposal. That’s why we love it so much.”
