Trout Festival plans firm up, with new events and significant changes

Plans for the upcoming Trout Festival are moving full steam ahead - and if those plans hold true, it will look much different, with new events and several location changes.

Gone will be Main Street Days, along with the Fish Fry social being hosted in the Whitney Forum. Instead, this year’s event will see a shuffling of venues for some events, with several new entries.

The Fish Fry will move a few blocks over to the R.H. Channing Auditorium, with the Flin Flon Arts Council running point on the event - entertainment will be provided by several local bands. Many Main Street Days festivities will be moved to Creighton, including the carnival midway, which will be set up around the Creighton Sportex from June 30 to July 2. While Main Street will be the location of a farmer's market and buskers event June 29, the street will remain open throughout the festival.

One Trout Festival event is already underway - the Trout Festival fishing derby, which runs until June 30 with winners announced July 8. Fish caught on any lake in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan between the 54th and 55th parallels are eligible to be entered into the contest.

The festival will include a new disc golf tournament June 25 around the Creekside Park course, a yoga in the park event June 26 at the Creighton Oval of Dreams and a skateboard demo held by Sk8 Skates from Winnipeg at the skatepark near Hapnot Collegiate. Events will take a two day pause June 27-28, but will continue June 29 with the Beat the Chief competition with the Flin Flon Fire Department, a community barbecue at Pioneer Square and the farmer’s market-busker event.

For June 30, events kick into high gear - a pool tournament at Rack’s Billiards, a second, smaller Fish Fry event at the Hooter in Creighton and a new event, the Ross Lake Regatta, in the evening - sponsors will provide kayaks and canoes and allow for boats to be launched onto Ross Lake to enjoy music, food and a front-row seat to the Canada Day fireworks display at midnight.

July 1 will see the Canada Day parade stretching from Green Street in Flin Flon all the way into Creighton, wrapping up at the Creighton ball diamond. Canada Day celebrations will continue on at Creighton and Denare Beach - 1 p.m.-4 p.m. in Creighton, 5 p.m.-midnight at the beach - along with a classic car show-and-shine will take place at Creighton Pizza. The festival will wrap up with the Flinty Golf Tournament at the Phantom Lake Golf Club July 2, along with a pig roast at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 73.

The organizational structure for this year’s festival has been one of the biggest changes - instead of events being organized by a small group of volunteers as they’ve been in recent years, a selection of corporate sponsors and community groups have mainly taken the reins.

“It’s a lot easier - there’s only six of us on the committee and that’s a lot of work for six people to do. It’s great when organizations are able to step up and take care of the events,” said Colleen Arnold, the City of Flin Flon’s representative on the board.

“I don’t know why we didn’t all work together before like this - we always advertised the events and everything, but we’re working a lot more closely.”