Coming up Feb. 15, ten different countries will collide in Lakeview to compete for the world’s highest honor in ice fishing.

The 2025 championships will be 21st competition at the highest stage of winter angling, as well as the first contest in the United States since 2013.

According to Team USA Coach Myron Gilbert, getting the event to Michigan has been a passionate process working with the Michigan DNR to make the competition fit in state guidelines.

“It’s my hometown and we’ve got a lot of state pride,” Gilbert said. “It’s been five years in the making for me to get it to Michigan. It was an easy sell for the community and the people around as well.”

The fishing portion of the event will be held on 323-acre, 18-feet deep Tamarack Lake in Lakeview. Competition for the event includes a pair of three-hour segments, one on Saturday, Feb. 15 and the other Sunday, Feb. 16. All ten teams will be staying in Grand Rapids at the DoubleTree Hotel from Tuesday, Feb. 11 through Monday, Feb. 17 for registration, training sessions, and other various fan meet and greets.

The lake will be divided into five different competition zones, in which each country’s team will send one of their five representative anglers to fish in a specific zone. Each zone’s count will be tallied after the three-hour window, in which they will be scored by weight. The team member with the most weight in their assigned zone will receive one point, the second receiving two points, and so on through all ten fishermen in each zone. Each country will then tally their five fisherman’s scores from each zone to get a grand total and establish the standings, with the goal of lowest score wins over the two days.

According to Gilbert, scoring can vary frequently due to the natural fluctuation of catching fish.

“The amount (of fish) that might win in one zone could be a half a pound of fish, while another other guy may have 20 pounds and not win. It's all aggregate of what's going on in your zone. There are usually some big swings. A guy that wins his own zone one day, a lot of times, might be seventh or eighth in the zone the next day. There are huge swings all the time. That's very normal.”

When asked about a lake scouting report compared to the previous years’ international water, Gilbert said the U.S. team has an advantage this year’s tournament due to European lakes being much more bottom-feeding, compared to more mid-level, suspended fishing strategies in America. 

“They were a lot more comfortable (in previous years) because they know their fish,” Gilbert said. “They're very bottom-orientated fish over there that feed on bloodworms on the bottom. We’re putting them on a lake where the fish are suspended most of the time, halfway down and above, so this is home field advantage for us.”

Team USA will be represented by the following anglers: Kieth Kniffen of Eaton Rapids, MI, Zack George of Hastings, MI, Jeff Kelm of Wisconsin Rapids, WI, Kevin Kowalski of Duluth, MN, and Nate Winters of Ogdensburg, WI. Team USA won silver last year in Mongolia, finishing one spot behind Lithuania.

For more information on the Championships and Team USA, visit https://usangling.org/ice-fishing-worldchampionship-2025/.