The 5th Annual Kenai Silver Salmon Derby wrapped up over the weekend. It is called a family-friendly fishing tournament where anyone can win prizes, which are awarded 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 was joined Monday evening in front of the Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center by Kenai Mayor Brian Gabriel to spin the wheel one more time for the magic weight to administer the grand prize awards, which for adults is $5,000 and for youth is $1,000. Every single fish that was entered over the course of the six-day derby was eligible and whichever fish weighed in that’s closest to the final spin walks away with the grand prize.
The final weight to win the grand prize was 4.83 lbs. 26-year-old Angela Covey, in her first year in the derby, walked away with $5,000 for her fish’s weight coming in closest to that mystery weight. Joseph Craig was the winner for the youth category. He walked away with $1,000.
Covey told KSRM:
“Well I finally had the opportunity to enter in with my friend Tommy McMurray here. It was fun. It was tiring, but it was fun. I enjoy fishing and catching fish. I was fishing out of a boat and offshore.”
Covey said she doesn’t know what she’ll do with the money yet, but intends on participating again next year:
“I hope I can enter next year. We’re going to eat, sleep and absolutely fish all the time!”
City Manager Ostrander told KSRM that it was a successful derby:
“It was really good participation this year. We don’t know the exact numbers of participants, but like I said earlier, I think we had 186 fish weighed in in the adult category, which far exceeds anything we’ve had in the past. When we tally up the number of participants, I’m confident that it’ll be more than what we’ve seen in the past as well.”
He also said:
“The thing that was exciting about this year is that we were able to announce pretty early that the prizes were more significant this year, and I think that did pique a lot of interest. It was cool that we had the winner in the adult category here today and the father of the youth category winner as well. One of the things that we didn’t mention though that I think is really important is that half of the proceeds from this derby go to habitat projects to improve and protect the Kenai River. Half of the proceeds go to the prizes and the rest of them go to habitat projects on the river. We have not been able to conduct one yet because I’m waiting for all of the years for that money to accumulate, but after this year and the success of this year, I think that we’re going to be able to do our first project probably next summer that is directly from the benefits of this derby.”
Ostrander said the Kenai Silver Salmon Derby will happen again next year, but no dates have been chosen yet.
