Marr Park hosts annual fishing derby

AINSWORTH — Around 100 participants gathered at the Marr Park pond Wednesday morning for a fishing derby that’s been a tradition for many in the local disabled community since the 1950s.

“Any adult or child that has a disability of some kind, they’re invited,” said Luke Horak, a Kiwanis Noon Club member and chair of the event. “We fish and then we have a lunch and kind of an awards program.”

The event was started by the Izaak Walton League many years ago, but was taken over by the Washington Noon Kiwanis Club in 2019. Horak said it was a big day for everyone involved.

"For many of the participants, they look forward to this from one year to the next, this is like the big thing for them this summer,“ he said. ”That in itself is a reason why I think so many people get behind this.“

It’s also rewarding to facilitate. Horak said the event was backed by the county conservation department, state DNR staff, community restaurants and a network of volunteers, not to mention buy-in from WCDC, a Washington-based employment agency for people with disabilities.

“For me, the neat thing about this is it’s fantastic to see these participants be able to fish and have things catered to them to have a successful fishing event,” he said. “To see the excitement and to see the enthusiasm when they catch a fish or when they’re fighting a fish, it’s just fantastic to see.”

Involvement runs in Horak’s family: the fishing rodeo’s first iteration was started by his grandfather, Paul Horak, who had polio and was paralyzed from the waist down.

“He loved to fish, he was handicapped himself,” Horak said. “He chartered a bus up to the University of Iowa to pick up handicap folks to come fishing at Lake Odessa, which is up in Wapello … then they moved it to a rural farm pond here in Washington County, and then for the last three decades it’s been at Marr Park.”

As for this year’s event, Horak said things went well.

“It was great,” he said. “We had a great turnout, the weather was perfect. We had 48 fish that were caught and two turtles. That happens to be a pretty close record of fish that were caught, at least in the last one or two decades.”

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