Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Discover the heartbeat of Juneau's cultural and community landscape with 'Capital Chat.' This series explores the vibrant world of the community, arts, and dynamic cultural and social events happening in Alaska's Capital City. Tune in to 'Capital Chat' for your essential guide to the pulse of our community, where every story is an adventure and every voice matters.
Joining me from the eightieth annual Golden North Salmon Derby, we have, Ryan and Sean here this morning. Ryan, good to see you. How are doing?
Speaker 2:Doing great. Thanks for having us again.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Of course. And, Sean, good to see you as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You too.
Speaker 1:So, we're coming up here. What do folks need to know at at this point in their planning process to participate in the Salmon Derby this year?
Speaker 2:Tickets are for sale online live.goldennorthsalmonderby.com or at western auto next Friday, the seventh, eighth, and ninth. It's a Salmon Derby. Hopefully, it's great weather and lots of fish. So be sure to get your ticket.
Speaker 1:Now the, the prizes, Sean, let's talk about some of the prizes this year. Always huge. And I'm looking at the history of the Salmon Derby, which goes back to, you know, 1947. It didn't become the Salmon Derby till '48, if my memory serves me, Crick.
Speaker 2:Something something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, talk to me about some of the prizes this year.
Speaker 3:So this year, because of the eightieth, we decided to ramp things up a little bit and ended up buying and getting a 14 foot Lund with a 25 horse and trailer package with some Cannon downriggers. And that is just another prize that is potentially for a raffle, basically. So if you've got a Derby ticket, you don't even have to fish, you're in the raffle. And then you can buy extra raffle tickets if you'd like. Packages, you know, right around $1,415,000 dollars worth just on its own.
Speaker 3:We had Polaris Sportsman, ATV, so that's in the the top one, potentially top two prize. There's an option right at the top end where you can, as the first place, you can decide to take the four wheeler, or you can take the $8,000 cash from the second prize, and the ATV will move into the second prize position.
Speaker 1:Nice. For folks that that may be, new to the Salmon Derby, describe the scholarship, component of this and how important that has been to to our to our community over the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's much more than just a salmon derby. What we do is we keep the fish, sell the fish to Alaska Glacier Seafoods, and those proceeds go to our Territorial Sportsman Scholarship Foundation. And we've awarded, since inception in early fifties over $2,000,000 in scholarships. The fund currently is around a million dollars we have invested.
Speaker 2:So it's it's much more than catching a big fish. Obviously, you wanna win the Derby and have some fun, but but realize that the funds and the money from these fish are used to kinda give back to the community and to high school seniors for college, trade schools, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:And, our our own Kelly Perez is being honored this year. Why the selection and and what it means?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it was brought to us by one of our committee members, and it everyone immediately said yes. He's been with the Salmon Derby, I forget how many years now as far as covering it, twenty, thirty plus years. And and the one thing people don't realize is that Salmon Derby is not what it is without the radio station. I mean, it's it's at the weekend.
Speaker 2:Everybody listens, gets the update. What's the big fish? What's going on? So he's he's been a huge contributor to Salmon Derby over the last however many years.
Speaker 1:So proud of Kelly. In in fifty years plus here on KINY, I mean, that's that's a legacy that just doesn't happen in this industry anymore. You know? Such a legend. How about sponsors, Sean?
Speaker 1:You wanna, list some of the folks that also make this possible?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We've got Rocky and Marine and we got Juno Powersports. Toyota, of course, is our official sponsor. They're kind of affiliated through Juno Powersports as well. That's Juno Toyota, Bobcat, Carl's Auto Marine, Boinkles, of course.
Speaker 3:We've got a few others out there. Broken Rudder actually donated $5,000 repower credit and also an eight horse, I believe. A couple other big prizes out there. There's some outboards and such like that. There's, you know, all the way down to a D1 delivery from a dump truck, you know.
Speaker 3:And I think there's two of them in there.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's the the biggest prize pool we've ever had. Well over a $100,000. So it's Wow. You know, every every prize in the top 10 is above $2,000 in value.
Speaker 2:It it's a great, great prize pool this year. So thanks to the community for for giving back to the Salmon Derby.
Speaker 1:No kidding. And, we went digital last year on on tracking, the fish that were coming in. We're doing the same thing this year. Right?
Speaker 2:That's correct. It's all live results. As soon as they get fish get weighed in at the Derby Docks, they get entered in the computer, and it's live on on our website. So it's it's real time as as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for coming in and creating more excitement. And, again, remind folks where they have to go to, make sure they're they're they're legal for the weekend. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Western Auto or live.goldennorthsalmon goldennorthsalmonderby.com. Other than that, no changes since last year. Let's hope for lots of fish, great weather, and a great Derby.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Brian Sean, thanks for coming in today.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thank you.