Organizers thought they were set for the Saturday, Aug. 22, Kids Fishing Derby at the Seal Beach Pier.
There were 400 name tags ready to go.
It seemed like plenty. After all, the previous attendance record for the annual Rotary Kids Fishing Derby was 307 young anglers.
It wasn’t even close.
By the time registration closed Saturday morning, 474 kids ages 15 and under had registered for the 34th annual Rotary Kids Fishing Derby hosted by the Los Alamitos, Cypress & Seal Beach Rotary Club—more than 150 above last year’s record-setting turnout.
Add parents, grandparents, siblings and friends, and the Seal Beach Pier was shoulder-to-shoulder with families for much of the morning.
For a few hours, one of Seal Beach’s most recognizable landmarks belonged to the kids.
Some arrived knowing exactly what they were doing. Many were holding a fishing pole for the first time. There were even parents who had never fished before but brought their children simply because they wanted them to try something new.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife helped make that possible, providing more than 150 fishing poles along with tackle for participants who didn’t have their own equipment.
Rotary supplied the bait.
During the morning, volunteers cut and distributed 72 pounds of squid, 30 pounds of anchovies and five pounds of shrimp to keep hundreds of lines in the water.
More than 20 Rotarians helped stage the event, joined by four students from the Los Alamitos High School Interact Club. The students initially helped register the arriving crowd before moving to the bait station, where they relieved Rotary volunteers and took their turns cutting and distributing bait.
Meanwhile, the Seal Beach Lions Club was busy with an undertaking of its own: breakfast.
Lions volunteers prepared and served more than 700 complimentary pancake and sausage breakfasts, complete with orange juice and coffee, for young anglers and their families.
Then there were the fish.
More than 100 catches were brought to the official weigh-in station during the morning, including stingrays, white sea bass, croaker, baby leopard sharks, starfish and perhaps the day’s most unusual visitor, a Pacific shovelnose guitarfish.
Every catch was released after being weighed.
The largest catch of the day was a baby sand shark weighing 2 pounds, 10 ounces.
Competition was divided into three age groups, with trophies awarded to the top three finishers in each division. First-place winners also received a new bicycle appropriate for their age group—20-inch, 24-inch, and 27-inch bikes—while second- and third-place finishers received new fishing rods and tackle.
• In the age 6 and under division, Hasanah Ryan took first place, followed by Dexter Fournet in second and David Fonsera in third.
• In the ages 7–11 division, Everly Bersuch finished first, Vincent Zavala second and Abraham Ryan third.
• In the ages 12–15 division, Caden Carl captured first place, with Violet Juarez taking second and Gavin Russell third.
But for organizers, the numbers on the scale and names on the trophies tell only part of the story.
“When you look down the Seal Beach Pier and see it shoulder-to-shoulder with kids and families fishing together, it’s hard not to smile,” said Rotarian Art Remnet.
“What I love most is that nobody has to know how to fish or even own a fishing pole to be part of this. We had parents who had never fished before bringing their kids because they wanted them to try something new. Maybe they caught a fish. Maybe they didn’t. Either way, they spent a Saturday morning together and went home with a story,” Remnet said.
“That’s why our Rotary Club has continued this tradition for 34 years. It’s not really about who catches the biggest fish. It’s about giving kids an experience and families a memory. Seeing that pier filled with so many people having such a good time was pretty special,” Remnet said.
The morning’s comfortable weather grew warmer as noon approached, and the crowd began thinning after about 10:30 a.m. That was understandable after several hours of fishing, particularly for some of the derby’s 3- and 4-year-old anglers.
When it was finally over, the remaining members of what volunteers jokingly call the “Rotary Cleanup Crew” were tired, but there was plenty of satisfaction to go around.
A record had been broken, more than 100 fish had been caught and released, hundreds of families had shared breakfast, and 474 kids had spent a Saturday morning discovering what might be waiting beneath the waters surrounding the Seal Beach Pier.
The Los Alamitos, Cypress & Seal Beach Rotary Club is part of Rotary District 5320 and Rotary International’s worldwide network of approximately 1.4 million members. The Los Alamitos, Cypress & Seal Beach Rotary Club meets at noon on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at On The Greens at the Navy Golf Course in Cypress. For more information, visit LACSBRotary.org.