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Two men, one dream: Philly's first annual striped bass fishing tournament!
Philadelphia is, if nothing else, a city of dreamers. And of fish. And of those whose dreams revolve around fish.
Two men, one dream: Philly's first annual striped bass fishing tournament!
(From this week's Million Stories section)
Philadelphia is, if nothing else, a city of dreamers. And of fish. And of those whose dreams revolve around fish.
Last weekend the city celebrated Shadfest, an event with two humble purposes: having a great time at Penn Treaty Park and honoring the great shad fish, once pivotal to the region, now all but gone from the Delaware's raunchy waters. In just three years, the offbeat festival has become a Philly institution.
And dreams, it seems, beget more dreams. Among the tables at Shadfest was one manned by Len Albright and Jason Strohl, two men with a single mission: to organize a striped bass fishing derby.
In an epic, 1,000-word press release they sent out recently, they explained that striped bass annually swim up the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers to spawn before returning to the sea. But Philly has no organized contest to fish for them.
On May 1, the first Philadelphia Striped Bass Derby will begin (go to phillystripedbassderby.com for info). A catch-and-release contest, the derby, as its organizers see it, is about something even bigger than a really big fish : "We kind of saw it as a way for people to make a connection to Philly's rivers," says Albright. "The striped bass is a really beautiful fish, so we thought it would be a good starting point."
They're reaching out to as diverse a crowd as they can — "There's a huge Cambodian community that fishes down by the airport," Albright notes. "A lot of people fish the rivers but they don't get a chance to meet each other."
"It's only recently that the rivers were clean enough for bass and shad and herring to come up them again," adds Albright. "And with all this fracking, you know, the rivers are under threat again. Any way to draw attention to them is really important."
