GUILFORD TWP.: John Burton and his brother rolled into River Styx Park about 6 a.m. Saturday to catch perhaps the biggest prize at the annual Youth Fishing Derby — a wide area of flat rocks on the water’s edge and a place to hoist an awning for about 13 family members who attend the contest every year.
About an hour later, still 90 minutes before the rainy-day derby began, brothers Gary and Steven Dangelo and their sons arrived to snare their favorite fishing spot, a grassy area near the pond’s intake valve.
By the time Medina County Park District officials sounded a horn for fishing to commence at 10:30 a.m., about 175 children and adults ringed the 3-acre pond.
Within a minute, three girls on the north side of the water had already pulled in fish, making it tough for judges to decide who caught the first fish. Kaelyn Stefan ultimately took the prize.
The free spring fishing derby has more than a 30-year history in Medina County, said Mark Ludwig, a naturalist who oversees the event. Over time, it’s changed locations, but has for about a decade been held at River Styx, which has a Wadsworth mailing address.
The pond there is always full of bluegills, bass and catfish, but the park district stocked it with 200 pounds of trout the previous week to keep the derby interesting.
“We live in an indoor society now,” Ludwig said. “Our goal is to get children outside to enjoy nature with their families.”
Burton said he told his children to put away their phones Saturday after his daughter Brooke, 15, got a bite, but nearly missed it because she was looking at her screen.
Brooke, laughing, pulled her phone out of her pocket and showed a stranger pictures she had taken of her family that day. She said the derby is the only day each year she fishes because she gets bored too easily.
Yet two years ago, Brooke won the derby casting contest, where children try to cast a line into the hole of a slanted board that looks like a cornhole game.
“I just went like this,” Brook said, casting an imaginary line from an imaginary fishing pole. “I got a bull’s-eye.”
Bull’s-eyes are rare in the casting contest, organizers said. And Brooke said people pointed out that a girl won that year.
“But what made it so funny is that she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” her dad said.
Brooke agreed. And then, half teasing, half pleading, told her dad she needed her phone during this derby to take pictures just as her cousin, Makayla Burton, 12, came running toward them carrying a tiny fish that bit a hook on the end of her line.
“It’s 1 6/8 inches,” Makayla said. The fish, smaller than Makayla’s pinkie, put her in the running for a derby trophy for smallest fish caught Saturday.
On the other side of the lake, the Dangelo brothers and their two sons — Giovanni, 3, and Ashton, 6 — had already caught a half-dozen trout.
Steven Dangelo, who lives in Canal Fulton, said he took the day off work for the derby.
“This is where our dad taught us to fish,” he said.
He planned to smoke most of the trout later that day. But he said he’ll cook a few with lemon pepper and oranges in foil packets over a fire in a pit.
“He’ll eat two,” Dangelo said, pointing to Ashton.
“I love fish,” Ashton said, just as one of their fishing poles bent with another solid bite to reel in for dinner.
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.