Spring Mack Days will come to a close this weekend on Flathead Lake and Kalispell angler Jason Mahlen is poised to take top honors for the third straight year.

To date, he has turned in 1,338 lake trout in his top 18 days of tournament fishing, giving him a comfortable lead over second-place Ryan Shima, who has 1,236 lake trout.

Despite his mastery over the popular sport fish, Mahlen is far from secretive about his technique. Fishing styles are as varied as the anglers who compete in the nine-week tournament. Some cast a rattle disaster, a spoon-style rig that they jig up and down with quick flicks of the wrist. Others run two flies, but they can risk running too heavy, unable to feel the bite.

For Mahlen, it’s the cast-and-drag with a simple neon grub baited with sucker meat.

“A lot of people, if they’re used to stream fishing, they think they’re going to get hammered by bites, and 70 percent of the time the bites are so light you barely feel it,” he says, reaching over to check the line on his second rod, a G. Loomis NRX. “This is finesse fishing. I like to fish slow but I catch fast.”

Mahlen has his favorite holes, preferring to locate on top of structures, abrupt changes in depth on the lakebed ranging from 175 to 230 feet. But he knows when to cut his losses, pulling up anchor and roaring off to the next spot if the first 15 minutes leave him empty-handed.

Over the course of two early morning hours last week, Mahlen lands about 10 fish, a total he shrugs off as “pretty good,” despite the washboard water rocking his 18-foot Lund fishing boat. On this morning the waves are approaching from the north, with a wind whipping west over the Swan Range to create waves that at times approach the boat from both sides.

Mahlen explains that with rough weather, fatigue becomes a major factor in the tournament.

Thousands of dollars in prize money is on the line, so this isn’t like fishing from a beach chair next to a case of suds. Serious anglers have their boats in the water by 5 a.m., often staying out until check-in at 9 p.m. Standing for nearly all that time isn’t easy, especially on an 18-foot fishing boat when a windy day starts whipping four- or five-foot waves across the lake.

“Before the tournament started, I started working out and exercising to try to get myself in better shape,” Mahlen says as another three-foot roller buffets the boat. “To stand up here in the washboard all day, these guys have got some endurance.”

Rough weather doesn’t just make for tired legs; the psychological toll of poor fishing conditions can be wearying, too.

And therein lies one of the keys to Mahlen’s success: patience.

“I’ve had a few days where I have 60 fish by noon, and yesterday by noon I had eight. Some days it’s just not working out for you.”

He had his share of those days at the beginning of the tournament. Normally he starts out by making the rounds of his favorite holes on the north end of the lake. But this year, a warm, wet spring blowing out mud from the mountains forced him to venture to unfamiliar holes farther south. Mahlen is persistent but calm.

“The first year I was in first — there’s a lot of stress, because of all the competition — I lost 30 pounds,” Mahlen recalls, not looking at all like he has 30 pounds to lose. “This year it’s been such close competition but I don’t even look at what other guys are catching. They have a big leader board; I don’t even look at it. I just come out and catch fish.”

Another top angler pulls up about 50 yards away. It’s Mike Benson, who has won top honors twice and winds up in the top five nearly every tournament. Mahlen explains that Benson was a mentor to him in his early days. The first year Mahlen took first, Benson was the one showing him the best fishing spots.

“He said, ‘I don’t care if you get first as long as I get second,’” Mahlen explains. And so it went.

While Mahlen’s strategy includes “basically try[ing] to lie about how many fish you’ve caught,” he speaks glowingly of the other top anglers.

“Especially the Shimas. Not only are they good guys, but they’re great fishermen. I fish alone, but Ryan fishes with two other fish hogs.”

He’s talking about a dynasty of Mack Days leaders spanning three generations. The youngest, Danner Shima, is only 15 but sits in third place overall with 1,075 lake trout caught. Within the 13-17 age bracket he is untouchable: second place is currently held by a 220-fish total.

Danner’s father, Ryan, is in second place overall in Mack Days. Ryan’s father, Mike, is a longtime Mack Days competitor.

The competition may be fierce, but it also has created lasting friendships. For competition organizer Cynthia Bras, one of her favorite parts of the tournament is watching those bonds grow over time.

“The top 20 anglers are pretty serious. They all want to win, to get the most fish, but they’ve become really good friends. If anyone needed any help, they’d all run out there right away,” she said, adding that many of them gather around a campfire to party each night after turning their fish in.

The tournament rules are complicated, and have grown more so over the years as the organizers try different methods to incentivize a bigger and bigger catch. The goal is to get the most lake trout removed for the lowest dollar, as part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ ongoing effort to restore Flathead Lake’s threatened bull trout population.

The “Mack days” are the Friday through Sunday each week, during which every fish counts toward an angler’s tournament total, up to the daily limit of 100. There are 27 of those days during the tournament, of which the top 18 determine his or her total catch.

In addition to placing in different categories within the tournament, anglers can also win money by reeling in one of 5,000 tagged fish, placing in different angler categories and a lottery. Available prize money this year totals $225,000.

Even though only 274 of the 770 registered participants in the tournament this year have caught fish, that still adds up to a lot of trout.

As of Sunday, more than 30,000 lake trout had been turned in. The inaugural Mack Days tournament in 2002 brought in just 888 fish.

Barry Hansen, a tribal fisheries biologist who helps run the tournament, explains that the tribes invested in a couple of recent additions to their fish processing facility in Blue Bay to keep up with the event’s growing popularity.

“We’re still trying to grow with the contest,” Hansen says, pointing out a brand-new 14-by-14-foot freezer to store trout fillets.

But the big addition came last winter when the tribes purchased a $62,000 Pisces automatic fish filleter. The fish are decapitated, then fed into the front of the machine between two belts running side-by-side.

An assembly line of wheels and blades then slit open, gut, filet and debone the fish, popping fresh fillets out of the end. The guts are composted off-site and the meat —averaging about a pound per fish — is frozen and distributed to food banks from Missoula to Whitefish.

The final weekend of Spring Mack Days concludes Sunday, with an awards ceremony and fish fry for the participants beginning at 3 p.m. at Blue Bay.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.