Grab it!

On January 25th, 2013 I was invited to go ice fishing with a friend on a abandoned rock quarry he has access to on one circumstance, that we would release everything we caught other than blue gills. Naturally, I became excited knowing the possibility of large fish in the deep rock quarry's. We arrived to quarry and dragged the tent to a spot he said would be good for some crappie. All we had with us that day was a 6 inch ice auger. We drilled many hole and checked each of them for activity with the Vexlars. We found two with decent activity and pulled the tent over us and i dropped down my lucky Swedish Pimple spoon into the hole. After about 30 minutes with no bites the excitement began to wear off. Suddenly, my rod began to form the shape of a U. Hook set and the fight was on! I told my friend that I believed it was a bass. I would reel in only to have the line taken right back out. After what seemed like a timely fight I saw the fish flash across the hole... It was a crappie, and a big one. My excitement hit an all new level. The fish was wearing out fast and was coming up. Finally he was headed straight for the ice hole head first. He gave one last fight which sent him straight up into the hole. The fish immediately became stuck in 6 inch wide hole. This resulted in me yelling "grab it!" And my friend and I launching off of our seats head first for the fish. Knocking over our heater, Vexlars, sodas, and tackle boxes.... I had the fish in my hand and out of the hole. Although we were out of control due to excitement we managed to find the measuring tape and scale. 16.25" inches long and weighed 2.5 lbs. I have been an avid crappie angler my entire life and had yet to come across a trophy as beautiful as this one. After some more high fives and pictures with the fish we proceeded back into the tent and push the fish through the small ice hole and watched it swim away...