The 14th Annual International King Salmon Calcutta Tournament is securely stowed away into the history books. We were fortunate to have a good day on the water, good number of fish showing throughout the area, and at the same time provided some income for the South Peninsula Sportsman Association.

However, for me it was a very long day and it was well into the evening hours of Mother's Day for me to catch up on the sleep that I had missed. My Tournament commenced at 5:00 p.m. on Friday in preparation for the banquet and the Calcutta Auction that would follow. By 6:00 p.m., the banquet room was filled with anxious fishermen only to discover that that the vendor had not anticipated the turn out and ran out of prepared meals. For the remainder, they had the choice of ordering from the menu.

At 7:00 p.m. the auction commenced, after the normal opening remarks and introduction of special guests, my cordless mike decided to work whenever it chose to do so. Getting frustrated with it several times throughout the early evening, I finally said "to hell" with modern technology and completed the auction by voice alone. As normal, my two partners, Terry and Patti did a marvelous job keeping books and keeping me on schedule. This year, the average boat sold for $232.50 with the high boat (Don T. Charters) going for $450.00 and the defending Champion at $425.00. The "big" sale of the night occurred with a jacket that a gentleman had left at his fishing buddies home a couple of months ago. The jacket showed back up at the auction and was sold back to the original owner for $70.00. By the time that the auction was completed, monies collected, and my staff had a meeting over cocktails, we were through for the evening by 11:30 pm.

Back at the office, I would remain up for the next three hours accounting for all the funds and working up the financial report. Finally retiring to my recliner at 3:30 and setting my alarm for 4:30 a.m. At the bell, I was up and making a pot of coffee to get me through the early morning hours. At 5:00 a.m., I was at the beach to check out the water conditions and to see if we would be able to fish. Had a great time visiting some of the fishermen that I had not seen over the winter. At 5:30, one single tractor started launching boats which provided a lot of frustration since the tournament was scheduled to commence at 6:00 a.m. Hanging around to watch a few boats launched, I retreated to the Anchor River Inn which was the "Official Derby Headquarters" this year. Leaving the boat launch, I traveled past a single file of boats for the next 1/2 mile that were waiting in line to launch.

Knowing that the Inn did not open until 8:00 a.m., my concept was to sneak in a couple hours of nap time in my truck until the first fish would be brought in. Pretty lonely in Anchor Point between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., whether I was to tired to sleep or my thermos of coffee kept me awake, I remained wide eyed until just before 8:00 a.m. when I witnessed the cook and waitress reporting to work. Shortly after this I drifted off into a nap land. I was awakened by a tapping on my truck window, opening one eye I peered out to see the waitress standing beside my truck with a cup of coffee in her hand. "Gee, Stan, I thought you might like a cup of coffee!" Thanking her for her thoughtfulness, I accepted her offering. As she retreated back to her responsibilities, I took a peek at my watch, it was 8:15 a.m.! My "big sleep " for the day was now completed.

Wandering from the truck to the lounge throughout the morning, the first King Salmon arrived at the scales to be weighed in at high noon. A nice 26.4 pounder, just two pounds less than the largest fish caught last tournament. From the cell phone calls, it appeared that we would be seeing a slow tournament. The next fish would not show up at the scales until 3:20 p.m., a 18.4 pounder. It now appears that the fishermen were playing the tournament close to the breast, by 4:00 p.m. a steady flow of fish started coming over the scales. A young man, age 15 brought in a 30.7 pounder to take the lead and also the top spot for the $300.00 bonus for the largest fish to be be taken by an angler under 16 years of age. At 1725, the big guy should up at the scales, this is the fish in the picture weighing in at 40.7 pounds and landed by Fred Hackney aboard the F/V Dream Catcher.

An hour later, he would be presented the Championship Check for the Tournament, his fish earned him $1,743.00. Following this, I would present a check to Tabor Ashmant, owner of the Sport Shed on the Homer Spit a check in the amount of $3,487.50 for having the foresight of buying the "Dream Catcher" at the auction. He had purchased this boat in the auction for $200.00. Not a bad investment. The remaining funds of the $8,402.00 generated would be turned over to the Sportsman Association.

This tournament was set up to be a small tournament with several goals in mind, the one fish wins it all was to reduce the kill ratio of fish that you normally see in a derby and it has proven to be effective, more fish are released in this tournament than are retained. The bidder on the winning boat gets the largest amount of prize money because they are the ones that are putting up all of the cash. The concept is to have a fun tournament to promote sportsmanship, in that effort we have been successful. After a few toddies to celebrate the winners, I quietly slipped away to get some much needed rest and prepare myself for the tournament next year.

In regards to recession that everyone is concerned about, there was no sign of it during this past weekend. In comparison to last year, we saw a decline of the average sale price of boats drop from $239.32 last year to $232.50 this year, a decrease of two gallons of gas.