This year’s event will feature ‘real time’ weigh-ins
MANITOULIN – If you’re looking for the perfect Father’s Day gift for the special man in your life, consider getting him a ticket to the Manitoulin Expositor Salmon Classic.
For just $65 for four weeks, $35 for youth 14 and under, you and dad can spend some serious quality time together on the water and even win some pretty amazing prizes.
As a bonus, all those tickets purchased before Thursday, June 27 will be entered into the early bird draw, to be held on Friday, June 28 for $500 cash.
“There are some exciting new changes coming to this year’s edition of the Salmon Classic,” said organizer Dave Patterson. “To start, we’ve upgraded our website so all fish weighed in will automatically be seen on the online leaderboard which means you can keep tabs on real-time results.”
Another change is the target weight prize.
“We did away with the mystery weight as people were weighing in lots of small fish,” Mr. Patterson explained. “With a target weight, this will hopefully eliminate that.”
When it comes to amazing prizes, the Salmon Classic has it in spades. Jake’s Home Centre is once again offering the generous prize of a smoker (worth $1,000) for the angler with the fish closest to the target weight. Up Top Sports Shop in Mindemoya has also sponsored some amazing prizes that will be given away for those who find themselves in the top 10 at the end of the derby. “Blaine has graciously given us several hundreds of dollars’ worth of prizes,” Mr. Patterson said.
Moxy’s Bait and Tackle in Lively is also sponsoring the Angler of the Week prize for the best fish pics as judged by the staff at Moxy’s which also comes with a sweet prize pack (details to follow).
“We have so many prizes; this year is shaping up to be a good one,” he added.
The cash prizes are as follows: for heaviest salmon, first, $12,000; second, $4,000; third, $2,000; fourth, $1,000 and fifth, $500. In the trout category, the top heaviest fish gets you $2,500.
A special week one prize for the heaviest fish will be $1,000 while the heaviest fish of each day will receive $200. The youth prize for heaviest species (salmon or trout) is $500.
Lastly, the “Can You Out-fish the Ontario Fishing Guys” (OFG) prize of $500 will be drawn from those anglers who out-fished the OFG on the days they were out on the water.
The Salmon Classic will run from Saturday, July 27 to Sunday, August 25. Tickets are available at FishManitoulin.com, by visiting or calling The Expositor office at 705-368-2744, at the Manitoulin West Recorder office in Gore Bay, Up Top Sports Shop in Mindemoya, Fishy Fishy Bang Bang in Espanola, Moxy’s Bait and Tackle in Lively and at Ramakkao’s Source for Adventure in Sudbury.