Humpy Derby

After lying in bed this morning and sleeping so well that we missed our alarm, my darlings hummed and harred. Reagan said, don't sign me up I'd rather stay home and relax. Bradley just didn't know. I said, well Anchorage will be there tomorrow or the next day, the fishing derby won't. You've never been in a fishing competition before, let's give it one go and then you will know for the next time. Only Bradley was convinced. So we arrived around 9.30am, signed up paid our $15 and toodled out.

By 11am Bradley had his first fish. Despite or due to the wonderful instructions that Reagan and I were issuing, I'm not sure which. We had no measuring stick, so kind of guessed it was in the 20inch range so were ecstatic to find it in the front at 23 inches. Trying not to build his hope up too much, I assured Bradley that he had not yet won, that there were still four hours to go and anyone at any stage might whip in with a bigger fish. By 2pm he had entered his second fish, the first was still in the lead. The guys at the station were telling me that there were some big prizes and I had to stop them. You know how it is when someone brings your hopes up, then at the last minute you don't win. So we disappeared for the rest of the hour resting up since we were all pretty buggared with all the walking we had had to do.

When we turned up to the prize giving, Bradley said, I heard someone has come in with a 23.25 inch humpy. He was quite ok with it. Then just as prize giving started the judge came over and said, well you still have the overall winning fish. Bradley was stoked. For first in the 13 to 16 age group he won a BMX bike with pegs on the front and back. For biggest overall fish, he won a Devils Canyon jet boat ride for two plus a $25 Gorilla Fireworks voucher. Still it goes on, in the raffle ticket draw, he won a little tackle box full of all sorts of goodies. That is the biggest payback on a $15 entry we have ever had. Of course from now on Bradley will be dead keen to enter every other fishing competition known to man.

Well I thought humpies had already spawned. Not always so. That's what we found when we opened up Bradley's fish that day. Tonight is baked humpy seasoned italian seasoning with bacon laying over the top accompanied by fried rice, just because it's easy. They are an oilier fish though, so will try and think of something that will compliment that for the second one he caught.



Yep the winning fish is so big the photo has to go on it's side,
no really, it's the blogger who is unable to rotate the photo!