The 16th annual SFEC Kids Fishing Tournament was another great success and lots of fun!! Despite a forecast of possible thunder showers the weather was clear and sunny with blue skies! I don’t think I saw a cloud in the sky. There was little to no wind and the ocean was nice and flat.
Actually, the fun started on Friday when over twenty kids and parents met at Boulevard Bait and Tackle for the annual “bagging of the worms”. Cameron’s store was packed as this was one of our best turn outs ever for this event. As you can imagine bagging over 1,000 worms can be a quite a task, but it was accomplished in little time. Thanks to all who helped get those wiggly guys in the bags. Of course, by spraying a little of Bill Alexander’s special sauce on the worms they were ready for fishing on Saturday.
Although the weather conditions looked perfect that was one slight issue. It seemed liked every piece of seaweed in the ocean also decided to show up for the tournament! This made reeling your line in quite difficult, but the kids and parents did their best to deal with these green balls of seaweed they were dragging in.
In fact, 99 kids showed up and started fishing as Joe Furey of the Strathmere Fire Company sounded the siren to officially start the event. It looked for the first few minutes like the seaweed was going to ruin the fishing. The kids were dragging large tangled clumps of “weed” onto the beach and then had to clean their line by removing the seaweed piece by piece. But to many kid’s surprise, as they got to their hook, there was a fish on the line! Despite all of the seaweed, fish were being caught. Fish on!
After the first hour the seaweed seemed to lessen (or the kids had pulled it all out of the ocean) and the bite increased for the second hour. In fact, 132 fish were caught and released in total. For the first time in years we actually had 6 fish caught and released that were 12 “or over. The kids caught and released, bluefish, kingfish, spot, a brown shark and even a few crabs.
As the siren sounded ending the fishing at 11AM everyone headed for hot dogs, drinks and snacks. Thanks to our sponsors there was plenty of food and lots of prizes to give away.
Below is a list of our sponsors:
Coffey Kay Myers and Olley
Tosco Entertainment
BOK Construction
Boulevard Bait and Tackle
Sea Isle Bait and Tackle
Whale Creek Marina, Bait and Tackle
Axis Self Storage
Judy and Herb Hollinger
Northstar Marine
Nationwide Insurance
Brian Francis
Signarama of Norristown
Thanks, as always to each of these sponsors for their support each and every year. A special thanks to Richie and Jan Hollinger for the hot dog cooker and the Townsend family for the use of their tables.
Our fish winners were as follows:
1. 13.5” Bluefish Andy Sigafoos
2. 12.5” Kingfish Ricky Caine
3. Four kids tied for third placed with a 12” Kingfish
Carter Koestel
John Keller
JD Cure
PJ LaBette
Congratulations to our Fish Tournament winners! Each received a great prize donated by our sponsors.
Finally, we also had our raffle with four great prizes.
Our first winner was CJ Furey who selected the ‘X” Box “One S”.
Our second winner was Sloan Oliver who selected the Margaritaville Bicycle.
Our third winner was Bill Pulaski who selected the Fit Bit.
Our fourth winner was Angella Bok who selected the surf fishing supplies.
Next year we look forward to seeing you all again for our 17th tournament! Thanks again to each and everyone of you that volunteers your time, your money or brings a “Kid” to the beach to go surf fishing.
We hope that each of enjoyed the tournament as much as I did!
Thank you ALL again,
Edward J DiMarcantonio
Kids Fishing Tournament Chairperson