Whats the connection with The Gathering and the Jensen Nationals?
We’re kind of a sideshow. The Gathering is just that. Minnesota’s spearing fraternity comes out and everyone is invited and a good time is had by all. The Jensen National Fish Decoy Carving Championship is held and the Show is unrivaled for quality and quantity of fish. Doug Davis started his fish fry in 2001 and in that spirit I thought it would be cool to have a contest going informally among that group. Rod Osvold gave us permission to do it at the Perham show. And ended up setting us up to make it work. We had a great time and everybody saw that the other events had a synergy that made each event better. So we’re did it again. With more prizes. It worked great! And so we did it again in 2004 and again it really went over well. In 2005 we upped the top prize to $1000.00 to attract World class realistic entries and that worked. The top 25 fish are truly world class realistic fish decoys, absolutely remarkable. In 2006 we’re going back to folk art.
