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80th Golden North Salmon Derby pays tribute to teller of fish tales
- Mark Sabbatini
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Organizers dedicate three-day derby starting Friday to Kelly Peres, who has provided radio coverage of the event for the past 50 years
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
The first Golden North Salmon Derby in 1947 featured 30 prizes "ranging from a Plymouth sedan to canned fruit." For the 80th derby, organizers are offering something with more splash.
"The big thing we're doing this year is giving away a boat (in a raffle) to anybody who participates," said Ryan Beason, chair of the derby, in an interview Wednesday. "That’s something that we have not done in the past."
He added people don't have to fish to buy a derby ticket and be entered for a prize.
The three-day derby scheduled to begin Friday has evolved in many ways during its history, from when it takes place during the summer to the type of fish participants can catch.
"The biggest one I can tell you there is in the pioneer days of the derby it was a king salmon derby, and it hasn't been that for probably 30 to 35 years," said Kelly Peres, who has given derby reports for KINY radio and its affiliates for the past 50 years, in an interview Thursday. Coho salmon now account for the majority of fish caught.
80th Golden North Salmon Derby essentials
When: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Weigh stations: Amalga Harbor, Douglas Harbor, Auke Nu Cove; open Friday and Saturday 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Tickets: $50 adults (ages 13 and up); $45 veterans; $10 youths (ages 6 - 12)
Official website: https://www.goldennorthsalmonderby.com/
Beason and Peres will each be in familiar places this year: Beason will be fishing in a spot where he was the derby winner in 2001 and 2002 ("down south of town is what I tell people"), and Peres will be on the air providing updates — although others are now taking on the lead responsibilities.
The 80th derby is officially being dedicated to Peres by Territorial Sportsmen Inc., which sponsors the event and refers to him as the "voice of the Golden North Salmon Derby." Peres said he learned about that honor about two weeks ago.
"I feel honored over the top," he said. "If anything at all, I wonder if it's warranted, for lack of a better term. But if I can do anything to help promote Territorial Sportsmen and what they do — and the Derby and the scholarship program and the rest of that — I'm full force ahead."
The scholarship reference is for a program that began in 1954, which has awarded more than 350 scholarships totalling more than $2 million. Beason, who won the derby as a youth in 2001 and 2002, also was among the nine people to win a scholarship when he was a high school senior in 2007.
"What they do is they spread it out over four years and you get a payment each year, so it helps a lot," he said. He said he’s been helping organize the derby for the past decade because "this is like me giving back in a way."
The first Golden North Salmon Derby began on Aug. 31, 1947, although it didn’t officially acquire that name until the following year, according to an article published in 1989 about the inaugural event. The first derby was suspended on its opening day "by high winds and rough water," and when it resumed the following Sunday it was with changes to safety and other rules.
Dick Harris was the first derby winner, with a 38-pound, 4-ounce salmon, according to the article.
Organizers of the first derby expected people on about 200 boats to compete for the $4,500 in total prizes. Beason said participation peaked in the mid-1990s with about 2,500 participants, and there have been about 800 to 1,000 participants during the past decade.
"It's just changing trends, fishing not being what it used to be, smaller fish," he said. "I think it's a combination of everything, but I think overall the general theme for the derby has stayed pretty much the same. It's a good family weekend to get out in the boat and have your chance of winning some good prizes."
It’s also gotten harder over the years to find volunteers to help during the three-day weekend, but technology has made some of the tasks simpler, Beason said. Electronic tickets are now offered, organizers stopped requiring validations of tickets at docks last year, and live results are available online.
Live updates of results have, of course, been broadcast by KINY for decades. Coverage of the event has also changed with time and technology, Peres said.
"When I got started back in the old-timey days — this is pre-cellular telephone days, back in the late ’70s, early ’80s — there was a lot more to the communications end of it," he said. A frequent crisis involved the station paying phone companies to provide lines down to the weigh-in station docks, which could go haywire depending on the tides.
"If you're the telephone line guy and you run a line all the way down the dock, you might run that line 200 or 300 feet down a dock — the length of a football field," Peres said. "And if the tide happens to be high at that point, that line is going to be much shorter than when the tide goes out. And if that dock drops 13, 15, 17 feet, that line will snap like a bad fishing line and your communications are shot. And I can't tell you how many times that happened over the decades that I was involved."
Cellphones have largely solved that problem — except reception is unreliable at Amalga Harbor, located nearly 25 miles north of downtown Juneau, Peres said.
"The other thing that has happened, given technology, is we're a lot better at getting fisherpeople and their catch public exposure faster," he said. "Now we've got reporters with cellphones at the weigh-in stations taking pictures and texting those pictures back to Derby Central — which in this case I guess now is Mendenhall Mall for KINY — and then distributing those up on our Facebook page and some of our other web pages."
The radio broadcasts by various station personnel and recruited helpers are scheduled from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, but Peres said he never had difficulty coming up with things to present for 12 hours when he was the primary voice involved with the broadcast.
"There's a lot going on," he said. "We have special fish story features coming up. We have special parody commercials coming up. We have interviews with people who are out on the water. We have almost a constant flow from people who are on boats sending stuff."
The station and its affiliates will also be using a Super Bowl theme for coverage of the 80th salmon derby, but "I can't get into too much detail there without spilling too many beans that I'm not supposed to spill," Peres said.
Live derby coverage will be on both KINY and Mix 106 throughout the weekend, along with updates from those broadcasts carried on other stations.
The weather forecast is for clouds and light wind on Friday, a chance of rain on Saturday, and mostly cloudy skies on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. Beason said the fishing so far this year has been spotty.
"Hopefully the cohos show up because that's where we make most of our money," he said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
