Wrestling Match at Aikens

Aikens Lake sees its fair share of competitions. Most involve a friendly wager between fishing buddies on biggest fish, but there’s also “most fish” or “first fish” bets, as well as pool and shuffleboard battles in Big Molly’s.

Over the years, we’ve also hosted professional walleye tournaments to raise money for fundraisers, and on Canada Day or 4th of July you might see the occasional rivalry game of Canada vs. USA in horseshoes or beach volleyball.

But those who were at Aikens a couple weeks ago were lucky enough to witness our rarest competition of all: an annual wrestling match between NHL Senior VP of Hockey Operations Kris King and our very own Pit Turenne.

The tradition started years ago when Pit was a kid and would wrestle Kris in the cold water of Aikens Lake in a battle between 14-year NHL star and stubborn teenager on his home field. “Every year, I’d get older and Pit would get bigger and stronger,” said Kris.

This year, Pit passed the torch and enlisted the kids to wrestle Kris. When the action heated up, Pit couldn’t resist––he jumped into tag-team against the NHL strongman.

“We love having fun at Aikens,” Pit said. “That’s what we’re about––not just great fishing, but making the entire experience fun and memorable.”

Kris is a regular at Aikens and had a blast as always. This trip was for a special occasion, to celebrate his wife Paula’s 50th birthday. “She said she wanted to go to Aikens for her birthday, so was I was all over it,” said Kris, an Aikens Lake Honorary Pro Staff Guide.

Both Kris and Paula caught giant pike and tons of big walleyes, and had a blast with everything from shorelunches to visiting in the dining room to hanging out at Big Molly’s. It was Paula's first visit to Aikens; she loved it and did a great job fishing.



On the last night of Kris' trip, he went fishing with Pit and Julie. “We took him open water trolling over 250 feet of water to catch walleyes that were near the surface feeding on ciscoes,” said Pit, noting that his dad always made a point to go fishing with Kris on the final night of his trip. “Kinger’s a big-time fisherman, but he had never caught walleyes that way before so it was cool to finish up the trip catching fish with a new method.”

“Kinger is always a favorite up here––everybody loves seeing him, fishing with him, joking around with him,” Pit said.

There’s just one issue. Both Pit and Kris claim their side won the wrestling match. Unfortunately, the photos we have are inconclusive.

Maybe next year it will get settled.