FARGO — High school fishing leagues have become a popular activity for Minnesota students in recent years, and a North Dakota-based fishing league now in its fourth season is following a similar trend.
Established in 2019, the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League is on track to have nearly 200 students from nine different schools participating during the 2022 season, Kyle Agre, league president, said.
Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League logo.png
That’s about double from the inaugural season, Agre says. Teams participating in the upcoming league season are from Fargo North, Fargo South, Davies, West Fargo, Sheyenne, Horace, Central Cass, Oak Grove and Shanley high schools.
The league is the first of its kind in North Dakota.
“We have teams that are all the way from 10 or 12 students to 50, so there’s a lot of size range,” Agre said.
A longtime member of the F-M Walleyes Unlimited fishing club, Agre said the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League is patterned after similar programs in Minnesota, including the Heart O’ Lakes Fishing League, which includes about 20 schools in western Minnesota.
According to a recent article on the Mississippi Headwaters Board website, more than 5,000 young anglers participate in youth fishing league programs across Minnesota.
The goal of the Agassiz league, Agre says, is to expand youth fishing opportunities beyond take-a-kid-fishing events. Young anglers today could be F-M Walleyes club leaders tomorrow.
“(F-M Walleyes) has done a lot to promote youth fishing, and a lot of their efforts concentrated on maybe some of the younger kids,” Agre said. Giving junior high and high school-age anglers the opportunity to participate in a fishing league increases the odds they’ll stay with the sport, he says, and F-M Walleyes embraced the challenge.
“Any time you’re going to start something, if you want to be successful, you have to have the right people, and so we kind of rallied a group of people, and we all put our heads together and figured out how to make this happen,” Agre said.
Happen it did – even with the challenge of a global pandemic.
“We’re very fortunate,” Agre said. “The people are what make it happen – our leaders, our boat captains, our parents, our school administrators and our sponsors. Everybody has a part in making it work and it’s just been great.”
About the league
The league consists of two divisions: A Varsity Division for young anglers who want a higher level of competition in a more realistic tournament environment, and an Open Division, in which the focus is on the learning and the experience of fishing and boating.
Varsity Division teams fish the same lake on the same night with a rotation of lakes throughout the season. Anglers in the Open Division, by comparison, rotate between three lakes over the course of the season with events on all three lakes each night.
Scoring is the same in both divisions, with points awarded based on length for bluegills, crappies, bass, walleyes and pike or muskies; fish are worth anywhere from 1 to 6 points, depending on their length. The league uses the popular FishDonkey virtual tournament fishing app for documenting fish using a catch-record-release format.
A championship event wraps up the season, and teams in the Open Division compete on the same lake for the championship. Participants also compete for Angler of the Year honors based on the number of points they accumulate throughout the season.
This year’s league season begins Tuesday, June 7, with a kickoff event on North Dakota’s Lake Ashtabula. League nights then move to Minnesota, with events from 6 to 9 p.m. June 21, July 12 and July 26 on various lakes in Becker and Otter Tail counties.
The Varsity Division championship is set for 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 2, on Lake Lida in Otter Tail County, and the Open Division finale is set for 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 2 on Big Cormorant Lake in Becker County.
The goal, Agre says, is to keep the lakes within about an hour’s drive of the Fargo-Moorhead area.
“We don’t want to put pressure on our boat captains to take more time off work,” he said. “If we’re traveling two hours, that kind of puts a different picture on things.”
‘Trial by fire’
Andrew Shae, a league organizer and treasurer of F-M Walleyes, said there were plenty of unknowns going into the inaugural season in 2019, which he described as “trial by fire.”
“We didn’t know how many kids we were going to have, we didn’t know what kind of support there would be outside the people in that room,” Shae said. “We knew right away we were going to need a lot of volunteer support.”
The leadership group consists of about a dozen people, a number that includes coaches, assistants and others. In addition, league events require “between 70 and 80” boat captains who volunteer their services.
“We’re always looking for boat captains,” Shae said. “If anybody ever wanted to know more about that, we’d be happy to sit down and talk to them about how it works. Even if it’s one event or they have a cabin on a lake and they’re like, ‘Hey, I’ll do it, but you’ve got to do it on the lake I’m on,’” that can probably be arranged.
Lake Agassiz Fishing League girls and boat captain.jpg
The Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League draws young anglers from a variety of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Here, student anglers Shayne Biel (left) and Madison Ness of the Sheyenne Mustangs fish with boat captain Brad Maczkowicz.Contributed / Kyle Agre
With its fourth season on the horizon, the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League has drawn anglers from a variety of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, Agre says.
“We’re very pleased,” Agre said. “We’ve been well represented with female student anglers. When we look at where most of our kids fall, they’re probably in the 7th through 10th grade. Some of the real dedicated ones stick with it as juniors and seniors, but it probably thins out as they get into those upper high school grades because they just start getting pulled in so many different directions.
“But those are the kids that have the opportunity to be leaders in the league, as well.”
The participation fee for the Agassiz league is $50 per student, which includes transportation to and from the lake and helps cover insurance costs, gear and prizes.
On the Web:
https://lakeagassizfishing.org/
Established in 2019, the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League is on track to have nearly 200 students from nine different schools participating during the 2022 season, Kyle Agre, league president, said.
Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League logo.png
That’s about double from the inaugural season, Agre says. Teams participating in the upcoming league season are from Fargo North, Fargo South, Davies, West Fargo, Sheyenne, Horace, Central Cass, Oak Grove and Shanley high schools.
The league is the first of its kind in North Dakota.
“We have teams that are all the way from 10 or 12 students to 50, so there’s a lot of size range,” Agre said.
A longtime member of the F-M Walleyes Unlimited fishing club, Agre said the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League is patterned after similar programs in Minnesota, including the Heart O’ Lakes Fishing League, which includes about 20 schools in western Minnesota.
According to a recent article on the Mississippi Headwaters Board website, more than 5,000 young anglers participate in youth fishing league programs across Minnesota.
The goal of the Agassiz league, Agre says, is to expand youth fishing opportunities beyond take-a-kid-fishing events. Young anglers today could be F-M Walleyes club leaders tomorrow.
“(F-M Walleyes) has done a lot to promote youth fishing, and a lot of their efforts concentrated on maybe some of the younger kids,” Agre said. Giving junior high and high school-age anglers the opportunity to participate in a fishing league increases the odds they’ll stay with the sport, he says, and F-M Walleyes embraced the challenge.
“Any time you’re going to start something, if you want to be successful, you have to have the right people, and so we kind of rallied a group of people, and we all put our heads together and figured out how to make this happen,” Agre said.
Happen it did – even with the challenge of a global pandemic.
“We’re very fortunate,” Agre said. “The people are what make it happen – our leaders, our boat captains, our parents, our school administrators and our sponsors. Everybody has a part in making it work and it’s just been great.”
About the league
The league consists of two divisions: A Varsity Division for young anglers who want a higher level of competition in a more realistic tournament environment, and an Open Division, in which the focus is on the learning and the experience of fishing and boating.
Varsity Division teams fish the same lake on the same night with a rotation of lakes throughout the season. Anglers in the Open Division, by comparison, rotate between three lakes over the course of the season with events on all three lakes each night.
Scoring is the same in both divisions, with points awarded based on length for bluegills, crappies, bass, walleyes and pike or muskies; fish are worth anywhere from 1 to 6 points, depending on their length. The league uses the popular FishDonkey virtual tournament fishing app for documenting fish using a catch-record-release format.
A championship event wraps up the season, and teams in the Open Division compete on the same lake for the championship. Participants also compete for Angler of the Year honors based on the number of points they accumulate throughout the season.
This year’s league season begins Tuesday, June 7, with a kickoff event on North Dakota’s Lake Ashtabula. League nights then move to Minnesota, with events from 6 to 9 p.m. June 21, July 12 and July 26 on various lakes in Becker and Otter Tail counties.
The Varsity Division championship is set for 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 2, on Lake Lida in Otter Tail County, and the Open Division finale is set for 4 to 8 p.m. Aug. 2 on Big Cormorant Lake in Becker County.
The goal, Agre says, is to keep the lakes within about an hour’s drive of the Fargo-Moorhead area.
“We don’t want to put pressure on our boat captains to take more time off work,” he said. “If we’re traveling two hours, that kind of puts a different picture on things.”
‘Trial by fire’
Andrew Shae, a league organizer and treasurer of F-M Walleyes, said there were plenty of unknowns going into the inaugural season in 2019, which he described as “trial by fire.”
“We didn’t know how many kids we were going to have, we didn’t know what kind of support there would be outside the people in that room,” Shae said. “We knew right away we were going to need a lot of volunteer support.”
The leadership group consists of about a dozen people, a number that includes coaches, assistants and others. In addition, league events require “between 70 and 80” boat captains who volunteer their services.
“We’re always looking for boat captains,” Shae said. “If anybody ever wanted to know more about that, we’d be happy to sit down and talk to them about how it works. Even if it’s one event or they have a cabin on a lake and they’re like, ‘Hey, I’ll do it, but you’ve got to do it on the lake I’m on,’” that can probably be arranged.
Lake Agassiz Fishing League girls and boat captain.jpg
The Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League draws young anglers from a variety of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Here, student anglers Shayne Biel (left) and Madison Ness of the Sheyenne Mustangs fish with boat captain Brad Maczkowicz.Contributed / Kyle Agre
With its fourth season on the horizon, the Lake Agassiz High School Fishing League has drawn anglers from a variety of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, Agre says.
“We’re very pleased,” Agre said. “We’ve been well represented with female student anglers. When we look at where most of our kids fall, they’re probably in the 7th through 10th grade. Some of the real dedicated ones stick with it as juniors and seniors, but it probably thins out as they get into those upper high school grades because they just start getting pulled in so many different directions.
“But those are the kids that have the opportunity to be leaders in the league, as well.”
The participation fee for the Agassiz league is $50 per student, which includes transportation to and from the lake and helps cover insurance costs, gear and prizes.
On the Web:
https://lakeagassizfishing.org/
