The Top Bass contest on Lake Scugog in Port Perry on the Canada Day weekend attracted 91 boats and a crowd of over 100 to the Port Perry Marina and the Boardwalk Cafe as part of the Top Bass Fishing Series this year. This is an annual event for the Canada Day weekend in Port Perry.
The fishing boats, new two-seaters with huge outboard engines on the back and small fishing motors at the front, cruised in for the 3:00 p..m. weigh-in, one after another after another, and unloaded big, clear, see-through, thick plastic bags with one to five bass in them.
Each boat has an electronic fish-finder mounted on board. They also have hidden foot controls for the trolling motors, so it looks as though the boats steer themselves. The bigmouth bass they bring in are also known as green trout, as that is just what they look like.
Big Bass!
The bags of fish are transferred into see-through plastic tubs, carried onto a stage, plopped into another clear tub of water on weigh scales attached to a display board, so the crowd can see the total weight. The totals are also announced over loudspeakers and recorded on a huge white board while the crowd applauds and sometimes calls out “Big Bass! Big Bass!”
The announcer works the microphone and the crowd like a deejay and a beautiful young woman records numbers and totals like Vannah White. When a big fish comes in, they weight it separately and the fishermen who caught it holds it up for photographers while the crowd applauds.
Big Bass! Big Bass!
The bass average around two pounds and a big bass weighs over twice that much. Fish over five pounds draw applause from the crowd and, if it's the biggest one so far, they shout, “Big bass! Big bass!” This happens several times per hour.
The fishermen move their catches out of the way quickly, so the next in line can get weighed. It's obvious everybody involved is an old hand at fishing contests like this. They move fast and smooth so it looks as though they appear in a different fishing derby every day.
Bigmouth Bass
A “big bass” is the size of an athletic man's thigh and looks large enough to swallow his fist. The “big bass” of the day is worth $1,000.00 to whoever brought it in and the first place team wins over $4,000.00, judged on the total weight of five fish.
The fishermen are built like hockey players. Some dress in matching tee-shirts with their names, phone numbers, website addresses, and sponsors names printed on them. Only a few teams appear in uniforms like these.
Fishing Teams
The teams have names like Macneil and Anderson, Pilkey and Gale, Agouros and Worosz, Figuera and Listo, Wild and Jones, Gonzalez and Hashimoto, and Callaghan and Callaghan. There is no-one named Hemingway.
There are no fish other than bass in this contest, except for one carp, which gets a laugh from the crowd. There are no tunas or sharks in Lake Scugog. It is a freshwater lake attached to the Trent-Severn Waterway in southern Ontario.
Big Prizes
Weigh-in takes well over an hour and ends with prizes and thank yous to sponsors. A barge takes two tubs the size of caskets out to the middle of the lake, where the fish are freed. Team 1, McNeil and Anderson, took first place with five bass weighing in at 19.56 pounds.
One fisherman is overheard saying, “It's amazing how much energy you have when you're out there, on the water, catching fish, in the competition. And afterwards, you just feel spent.”
