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Fishing derby offers big prizes By MARK FREEMAN This year's second annual Rainbow $5,000 fishing derby will give weekend anglers a shot Saturday at some nice money to catch nice trout on Lost Creek Lake. Competitors fish anywhere on the lake and any way they want, providing they do so legally and with a fishing license in hand. The pre-registered contestants who catch the heaviest single rainbow trout in each of four adult age and gender categories will win $1,000 apiece. There are two junior categories whose winners each will net $500. It costs $10 to register, with registrations taken until Friday night at the Black Bird Shopping Center in Medford. The derby is the brainchild of a Medford radio-station manager, and it comes about through the co-sponsoring of a local sporting-goods store. Citadel Communications, which owns six Medford radio stations, fronts the $5,000 in cash prizes; Black Bird handles registration and logistics. Only 300 people had pre-registered by the beginning of this week, but that does not deter the optimism of Black Bird's Mike McMullen. Only 75 people pre-registered by this time last year, and 500 signed up in the few days prior to the derby, McMullen says. He expects a similar late rush of registrants by Friday's close of the store. Oregon Trout's annual salmon-education program is looking for volunteers to help present its classroom field trips for Southern Oregon schoolchildren next fall. Oregon Trout's "Salmon Watch" is an environmental-education program that couples field trips with classroom instruction as well as "service-learning" projects. It is designed to instill an appreciation and understanding of the value native fish, watershed conservation, and environmental stewardship play in everyone's lives. Salmon Watch volunteers are trained by Oregon Trout staff to assist teachers on field trips where students witness spawning salmon and learn about water quality and aquatic insects and healthy stream management. Volunteers may also assist with service-learning projects such as tree planting, water-quality testing and community education. New volunteers must take part in summer training sessions before joining the Salmon Watch program, and this summer's sessions begin July 13. For more information on the Salmon Watch program and the training sessions, call Ashley Henry or Lorie List at 772-7988 or send an electronic mail to: [email protected] So, did you name your new boat "Misty" this year and think you were being creative? So did several thousand others like you who bought new boats last year and christened them. From out of obscurity, "Misty" has emerged as the favorite boat name for 1999, trouncing such long-time favorites as "Serenity," "Odyssey" and "Obsession" in the BOAT/U.S. annual survey of the country's most common boat names. It is the first time that "Misty" has made the Top 10 boat names as compiled by BOAT/U.S., the largest organization of boat owners in the country. Second Place for this year is "Flying Cloud," also a newcomer to the annual list. The organization surveys new boat names each year since 1992 and releases the Top 10 names annually. Names like "Obsession" and Serenity" are perennial members of the Top 10, but they did not make the list this year. "Serenity," a common name, came in third this year, while " Irish Wake" and "Wind Dancer" came in fourth and fifth, respectively. Rounding out the Top 10 are: "Seas the Day," "Odyssey," "Gypsea," "Luna Sea" and "Osprey." GRANTS PASS -- The Josephine County Boys & Girls Club has won a national community-projects award for its program of raising infant coho salmon and releasing them into the Rogue River basin. The local club won second place in the national "Colgate Youth for America" campaign for 1999. For its efforts, it wins a $500 prize. The campaign is for members of six national youth organizations -- Boys Scouts, Girl Scouts, Camp Fire, Girls Inc., 4-H and the Boys and Girls Club. The organizations are invited to enter their best community-service projects into the annual campaign, with cash as the prize. In the local projects, club members raised 400 coho salmon eggs spawned at Cole Rivers hatchery and raised the eggs to the fry stage, then released them into the Rogue River basin. Outdoor Journal main page Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA