The 5th annual Kenai Silver Salmon Derby is scheduled to kick off on Tuesday, September 14th and go through Sunday, September 19th. It’s a family-friendly fishing tournament where anyone can win prizes. The Kenai Silver Salmon Derby awards prizes using a magic weight that is randomly drawn at the end of each derby day. Since any fish over four pounds is eligible to win, anglers of all skill levels have a chance to earn prizes.
Kenai City Manager Paul Ostrander:
“We like to call it the world’s most responsible derby because of the way that we do it. When we started this, we wanted to make sure that people weren’t going to be out on the river catch and releasing silvers to try to get the biggest fish they could because studies have shown that silver salmon, particularly in that tidal influenced area of the river, are really susceptible to catch and release fishing. The way that we designed this is that any silver four pounds or greater is eligible to win either the daily prize or the grand prize. Everyday of the derby, we establish what we call a magic weight. We’ve got two wheels that we spin. Whichever fish is closest to the magic weight of the day wins that daily prize. At the end of the derby, we spin it one more time, every single fish that’s been entered into the derby over the course of the six-day derby is eligible and whichever fish out of all the fish weighed in that’s closest to that one final spin of the magic wheels, they win the grant prize, which this year for adults is $5,000. For the youth, for the kids, the grand prize is $1,000. We think a lot of people are going to be excited about participating this year.”
Ostrander said the fishing has been good this year:
“Which is exciting because the last couple of years, you know, last year’s derby, for example, fishing was really tough. The weather was really tough. I’m really excited that this year we’re going to see great fishing. Hopefully good weather. The prizes are significantly larger this year, too, which we’re excited about.”
Participants must purchase tickets in order to fish in the derby. They are $10 daily or $50 for the entire event. There also are rules that participants must be aware of when partaking in the derby. The details can be found here.