A nine-year old has won first prize and $10,000 in the Sitka Salmon Derby, after landing a 32-and-a-half pound king. Second and third place went to an 11- and 15-year old respectively.
As KCAW’s Robert Woolsey reports, it’s not necessarily beginner’s luck that put these kids on top – some of them have been in the derby for years.
John McCrehin has been chairman of the Sitka Salmon Derby for twenty-three years. He says there were at least three former champions fishing this year whose combined ages may come in somewhere north of 240 years.
This year, the top three places were claimed by anglers whose combined ages total 35 years.
McCrehin is not bothered by this in the least.
“Well, it’s exciting,” he said. “It gets them — no pun intended — it gets them hooked.”
Nine-year old Caleb Gray’s 32-and-a-half pound salmon held the lead all through fishing the second weekend of the derby. And that’s no fluke – Gray also is the total weight leader for the derby, bringing in just under 209 pounds of king salmon over five days of fishing.
McCrehin let Gray hold the horn that would signal the end of the derby Sunday night (6-4-23). With eight minutes to spare, a boat pulled into the derby barge and landed a fish that was quite obviously smaller than Gray’s 32-pounder. McCrehin nevertheless called out “47.5” – just to see Gray’s reaction.
“And you should have seen the look on his face,” McCrehin said. “He knew that that number was bigger than his and he didn’t know if he should cry, or what not. I looked over his dad Kenny, who was leaning against an ice chest, and his expression was about the same. So I got them both!”
McCrehin is a big bear of a man, and playing with the kids in the derby comes easily to him. But they have played him, too. Three years ago – at the end of his twentieth season – he was stopped in his big bear tracks by a child named Piper Vaughan.
“I was going to announce at the (awards) ceremony that I was retiring,” said McCrehin. ” And it was time for new management to come in. And then Piper comes up with a picture that she had colored of her fish hanging on the scale, and a thank you at the bottom was kisses you know, and I thought, ‘All right, I can’t do this.'”
Third-place finisher Riley Berhardt began her derby career in a similar fashion to Caleb Gray, entering her first salmon as a six-year old – the derby minimum. Now a teen, she is the second-highest in total pounds landed, at 185, and one of her kings was the third-largest in the derby, at 29-and-a-half pounds.
Again, these numbers point to years of experience – not luck. McCrehin says Bernhardt knows her way around the leaderboard.
“I think she’s now 16 or 17 (note: 15 according to derby records),” said McCrehin. “And, you know, she was down there at the barge telling her dad to just calm down. She was holding her fish up and wanted pictures and she wanted them a certain way. And he was griping about how long it was taking and she just put him in his place. ‘This is my time, you just wait.'”
Bernhardt will win a pot-puller worth $2,000 for her third-place king, as well as a variety of cash prizes for high weight, and largest fish of the day.
The second-largest fish in the derby was landed by 11-year old Jack Haley, at just under 32 pounds, and he’ll claim $5,000 in prize money. Haley also brought in the third-most poundage, right behind Bernhardt at 162 total pounds.
Eleven is the perfect age to be distracted by the state Division 1 high school baseball tournament which was held over the same weekend in Sitka (and won, incidentally, by the South Anchorage Wolverines). But McCrehin has first-person evidence to the contrary.
“Mike White, who’s been in the derby for years, was with Mike Svenson down at Goddard this year helping and I guess he was asking all the kids down there would they rather play baseball or go fishing?” said McCrehin. “And after a couple of minutes of thought, most of them said they’d rather be fishing.”
McCrehin says he’s unsure whether this year’s large purse will continue into the future; several generous families and businesses contributed to the increase in prize money. And the final numbers have yet to be crunched. In all, 490 fish were turned in by 155 people over the five days of fishing. Proceeds from the sale of the salmon benefit the Sitka Sportsman’s Association’s scholarship fund, its educational programs, and Sitka High’s state champion shooting league, the Shore Shots.
