Dave Kennedy

Hi everyone, I just read this topic and thought I would give a response to the question of impact to the local tourism. I fished both one day tournaments on the weekend in question and will give you first hand my expenses. First off, I live in Huntsville. I have a two and a half hour drive one way to get to Peterborough so it costs me on average $175.00 in fuel for the truck just for the return trip back to Huntsville. For these particular events I spent three days of practice. The weekend before the event my wife and I went to Peterborough and stayed in a hotel. Hotel costs were $202.00. Fuel in the boat was approximately $100.00/day. While in Peterborough we spent close to $200.00 in meals for the weekend(I had to take my wife to the Keg for making her sit in the boat all weekend ). The weekend of the tournament I spent Friday on the water practicing then had a tournament Saturday and a tournament Sunday. Return trip from Huntsville $175.00 Hotel costs were another $202.00 Fuel was the same, approximately $100.00/day. Meals and misc. expenses were approximately $200.00 for the three days. My totals for these tournaments is around $1,654.00 with approximately $1,300.00 injected directly into the Peterborough area. These numbers do not include my entry fees or the time my tournament partner spent on the water or the money he spent in the area. He was on the water for four days of practice. These are just my expenses so I could definitely see some extra money coming into the community for the weekend with all the anglers as a whole. As far as the article that was in the local paper that is something I certainly don't like to see at all and cottagers certainly have a right to have some questions. Our tournaments were on the Saturday and Sunday. Those fish in the picture look like they had been deceased long before those days(but that is my opinion and it may be wrong. I am not a biologist) As a tournament angler I knew ahead of time it was going to be a very hot weekend so we prepared ourselves for that. Each morning four bags of ice were purchased and used throughout the day to keep the water temperatures from skyrocketing in the live wells. My live wells also have oxgenators in them that keep pumping in fresh oxygen all day long. At the end of the day it is harder to get the fish out of the live well because they are in such good shape. Also, because of the heat we did not target any smallmouth bass as they seem to be affected more in the extreme heat while in live wells. The tournament organizer takes a lot of care and effort in making sure the fish are healthy to be released and I believe the anglers as a whole participating in these events make the same type of effort. This type of topic can have many opinions and can get heated. This is understandable. The one common thing I see in this thread is that all the people involved care about the fish...........and that is a good thing! I hope this helps with some of the questions that were asked. Dave Kennedy