2026 Banquet
What a beautiful day to have a banquet at a great setting. Firefly Woods hosted the banquet overlooking a calm but flooded Leesville Lake on a day full of sunshine. We thank Kortney and Chad for providing a great venue and setup for our banquet. We also thank David White for handling check in, Phil Ringenbach for managing our Main Event ticket sales and Kevin Proffitt for helping with parking. This was our 65th annual Awards Banquet. From some quick internet research, we appear to be the second oldest muskie club in the United States being founded in 1961. Only the Muskellunge Club of Wisconsin is older being founded in 1953. We had 75 members and guests join the celebration and were treated to a fine dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs, with sides through the support of the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District and cookies and brownies brought by the members. Thanks go out to Cash and Chad for their cooking chops. Our guests included John Navarro, Curt Wagner and Kyle Leachman from the ODNR and Craig Butler from the MWCD. John Navarro gave insights into upcoming changes in the MAL as well as an exciting project to introduce muskies into the most recently named scenic river in Ohio, the Raccoon tributary of the Ohio river. Fry will be introduced over a number of years and monitored to see if the population can become a naturally sustained fishery. Kyle Leachman provided fascinating insights on the complex process of raising muskies in a hatchery and the ODNR’s drive to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their hatchery operations. Craig Butler provided a historical insight into the watershed as well as thoughts on the future development especially around the recreational use of the watershed lakes.
We thanked Keith Stayer for becoming our most recent Life member.
Derek Halas then presented our awards for 2025.
Kevin Proffitt received the Joe Blackwell Mr. Muskie award.
Shelly Leglise the Woman of the Year award.
Charles Clendenin the H. E. Pooch Curry award.
Erika Bonebrake the Queen Royalty award.
Addison Davies the Matthew Smith Memorial Award for Junior girls.
Cooper Marshall the Matthew Smith Memorial Award for Junior boys.
The Fifty Inch Award recipients were Charles Clendenin, David Noel and John Welch.
Derek Halas was presented the Award for 2025 Overall Tournament Winner.
The 10 or more Release awards and Dunmire awards were presented as well.
Dan Welch accepted the Fifty Inch award for his father John Welch. On behalf of the club we mourn the loss of John but know how happy he was to catch his first 50″ muskie.
The final picture is of Derek with his Angler of the Year award. He accomplished this feat while fishing out of a kayak in our events. Derek is obviously a quality fisherman.
We thank all for attending and look forward to our next event, May Madness. Until then tight lines.