Of course the big news from the festival was for the first time in its history, a person caught the tagged”Big Brownie” and won the $25,000 prize attracted to it. Jan Stepanski hauled in the lucky brown trout, which weighed 3.70 pounds, Tuesday and she accepted her check Sunday.

The fishing for brown trout was much improved over last year when there were no legal fish that made the board. The largest one this year was caught by Todd Westenbarger and weighted 5.80 .

After receiving his trophy Westenbarger said he has been fishing the tournament with his wife since 2000 and has never been able to catch a fish that finished first in any category.

“This is really something else,” Westenbarger said. It is very nice to see some browns caught this year. They are really tough to catch and this just feels really good.”

News Photos by Steve Schulwitz Jan Stepanski shows off the faux $25,000 check she received for catching “Big Brownie” which was a tagged fish. She is the first person to catch a brown trout during the Michigan Brown Trout Festival tournament and collect the prize. Todd Westenbarger received a trophy and a $1,200 check after catching the biggest brown trout during the fishing tournament. He is a first time winner and was fishing with his wife.

According to Tournament Director Brad MacNeill there were more boats in the tournament this year than last and about the same number of fish were weighed in. He said there could have been more put on the scales if it wasn’t for a bout of rain on two of the days. He said the fish that were caught however weighed more overall than in 2016.

“Our registrations were up, the quality of fish was better than last year and the fish were bigger,” MacNeill said. “I think catching Big Brownie is going to spark a lot more interest and I think next year you’re going to see more people target browns than the last few years.”

President Peggy Donakowski said this year’s festival was a large success not only in terms of fishing, but also the number of people who attended the small and large tents. She said there was a solid lineup of entertainment and activities which drew people to the harbor to enjoy them.

“It really did exceed our expectations and every event that was attended looks like the numbers were up,” she said. “I don’t know if it was because of the weather, people being eager to get out and enjoy it or it’s because of a better economy, but numbers were up across the board and there were a lot of people from out of the area, which is great too.”

Donakowski said because of the success of the festival and Big Brownie being caught she expects the festival to continue to do well. She said there is also a chance the prize for catching Big Brownie could go up next year.

News Photos by Steve Schulwitz Jan Stepanski shows off the faux $25,000 check she received for catching “Big Brownie” which was a tagged fish. She is the first person to catch a brown trout during the Michigan Brown Trout Festival tournament and collect the prize. Todd Westenbarger received a trophy and a $1,200 check after catching the biggest brown trout during the fishing tournament. He is a first time winner and was fishing with his wife. News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Dave Kuch shows off one of the walleye he caught during the Besser/DPI 10th annual Walleye Extravaganza. The top prize was $10,000.

“We hope to increase the prize money,” Donakowski said. “If we think we are going to have more participants next year we can increase that amount.”

Steve Schulwitz can be reached via email at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5689. Follow Steve on Twitter ss_alpenanews.