Ultimate Fishing Derby a big success

He hauled in a 33.4 lb. chinook on the opening day of the Port Alberni Ultimate Fishing Derby and waited through the long weekend to win the prize for top fish.

“Yeah, it was pretty intense,” he said. “We listened to the radio pretty keenly, and we had a pretty good celebration on Saturday for the biggest fish of the day anyways.”

Dombrowski won $5000 for biggest fish of the day, and another $5,000 for biggest of the derby

No records were broken this weekend, but just having a salmon derby was a victory in itself.

Organizer Al Ehrenberg said he and others couldn’t understand the cancellation of the historic derby due to COVID-19, so a group got together to host the event.

“We didn’t see a reason for not having a salmon derby,” he said. “I can see the festival, fairgrounds and the stage wouldn’t work so well but a salmon derby is fairly simple, so we said ‘why not’ and we put it together fairly quickly and the community response has been excellent.”

1700 tickets were sold, and after all the prize money is handed out, Ehrenberg says they’ll be giving approximately $40,000 to salmon enhancement.