FOS Director Mark Perry award's last year's Slam winner, Jason Boik, with his family.

The 6th Annual Florida Oceanographic Challenge set for June 21

June 6, 2008. One of the finest land-based treasures on our Treasure Coast, the Florida Oceanographic Society, will hold its annual Catch and Photo fishing tournament on June 21, 2008. There will be plenty of prizes, fun and food for everyone, and plenty of winners in a wide variety of divisions, including the Open Treasure Slam (snook, red, trout and pompano total lengths), the Pro Champ, 8 species division winners, bonus fly awards, and bonus kayak awards. So there will plenty of chances to fish for your favorite species, by your favorite techniques, all in the name of supporting the Florida Oceanographic Society (FOS) and having a good time with old and new friends.

Captains Meeting is June 20. Fishing is Saturday, June 21. Awards ceremony and dinner is Sunday, June 22 at 3:30.

More details, and a complete entry form, are available at FOS’ website, www.floridaoceanographic.org. You can also call for more info to (772) 225-0505, ext. 108.

(By the way, FOS hopes to stock its huge holding pond facility with a few more healthy specimens from the tournament, so if you’re interested in transporting some to the facility in your livewell, let FOS staffers know in advance and they’ll roll out the red carpet for you. Kids love to watch the fish come to feedings at scheduled hours throughout the week.)

Patrick Stracuzzi and Rufus Wakeman remind us that it's not always about catching the big fish. Sometimes it's about taking care of the kids.

FOS offers a variety of invaluable services to our community, including educational programs, entertainment for young kids curious about our marine environment, serious marine research, and authoritative advocacy for environmental concerns in our region. If you haven’t visited, you might consider it, and getting involved in the fishing tournament on June 21 is a great introduction to the multi-faceted facility on Hutchison Island near Stuart.

At last year’s tournament, the number of youngsters picking up awards indicated a bright future for family fishing. Fifty-six kids were among the record 184 anglers who signed up to support the longtime Stuart environmental institution. Over 200 entrants and their families gathered around the FOS Gamefish Lagoon on Sunday for a fish fry and awards ceremony, where each of the kids received a fishing rod and reel.

Last year, four-year-old Pierce Killer extended brother Conrad’s family tradition of winning the Kids’ Division, catching seemingly every one of the Indian River Lagoon’s known species for a total of 209.5 inches. Zachary Scherer, 12, took second in the snook division with a 42-inch fish. The Challenge’s only pompano fell to 6-year-old Grace Pardo. Eleven-year-old kayaker Mike McBride took the largest trout among all the kids, and beat the adult paddlers as well, including his father. Unfortunately, there was no trout category in the Kids’ Division, and he wasn’t old enough to qualify for the adult kayak award. He picked up a valuable lesson on the fairness of life, plus a hard luck plaque, when his 14-year-old sister Jenny went home with the kayak trout award despite turning a smaller fish.

Grand Slam winner Jason Boik said, “Redfish are usually a given for me, but I just never found them today. After I got my trout on the spoil bars near the St. Lucie power plant, I worked on getting a snook the rest of the day, throwing a black, white and pink Clouser under the mangroves along the Indian River east shore. I caught one short snook after another, and finally got a fish that qualified with 20 minutes to go.”

Boik was the first fly fisherman to win the overall FOS Challenge. His last minute snook release was good enough to take home the Hobie Quest Fisherman kayak grand prize.

Who will win this year? Everybody who enters, and FOS, too.