Fair Haven Challenge · Turtle Cove Resort & Marina

2025 Fair Haven Challenge: Awards Day at the Cove

Handshakes, plaques, and proud young anglers. The boats were back on the trailers, the scoreboard was full, and the whole thing ended the way it always does at Turtle Cove — everybody standing on the pavement by the water, phones up, waiting to hear a name called.

There is a particular hour at the end of a derby weekend that does not show up in the standings. The fish are weighed. The coolers are draining. Somebody has rolled a speaker out onto the lot and somebody else is holding a stack of envelopes, and for about forty-five minutes the parking area behind the marina turns into the most important room in Fair Haven.

That was awards day for the 2025 Fair Haven Challenge. Blue sky over Little Sodus Bay, sailboat masts stacked up along the far shore, the travel lift standing over the whole thing like a referee. Here is how it went.

An announcer with a microphone stands beside an angler holding a black award plaque, with the handwritten leaderboard and Little Sodus Bay behind them. Two anglers in sunglasses and ball caps stand together on the marina pavement, one holding a white prize envelope.
Names read off the sheet, one at a time, in front of the board and the bay.

The board did the talking

Everything came back to the whiteboard propped against the rail: three columns of names in marker, run totals scratched in beside them, a few corrections where a late weigh-in shuffled the order. No screens, no live leaderboard app. Just a board that anyone walking past could read, and that everyone had been checking all weekend.

By awards time it had become the backdrop for every photo taken at the Cove that afternoon. Winners stood in front of it. Families lined up in front of it. It is, honestly, the best set piece a tournament could ask for — the whole weekend written out by hand behind the person being congratulated.

Nobody needed the standings explained. They had been standing next to them since Saturday morning.

Handshakes on the pavement

The presentation itself was refreshingly unceremonious. Mic in one hand, envelope in the other, a handshake, a plaque, a beat for the phones, then on to the next. Half the crowd was recording. The other half was clapping with a drink in one hand, which is its own kind of applause.

An angler in a green shirt shakes hands and holds a prize envelope while the announcer grips a microphone. Two men shake hands and grin for the camera on the marina lot, with docked boats and the bay behind them. An angler in a stars-and-stripes fishing shirt holds up a black plaque next to the announcer.
Three of the afternoon’s presentations. The travel lift and the sailboat moorings show up in almost every frame.

The teams

Boat awards brought whole crews up together, which is when you get the good group shots — three or four guys who have been in the same cockpit since before sunrise, squinting into the same sun, one of them holding the plaque and the other two not entirely sure where to put their hands.

Three crew members stand shoulder to shoulder on the dock, one holding a plaque and another an envelope, coolers and gear behind them.
A boat crew collects together — plaque, envelope, and a cooler that has clearly done its share of the work.

The young anglers stole it

They always do. The youth awards are the part of the afternoon where the crowd noise changes pitch, and 2025 was no exception. A kid in a bucket hat and sunglasses, barely taller than the microphone stand. A teenager in an orange jersey doing his best to look unbothered about the whole thing while clearly enjoying it. A young angler holding a plaque with both hands because it is heavier than it looks.

Two things worth saying about that:

  • Every one of them got the same treatment as the adults — name read out, handshake, hardware, photo.
  • Most of them fished the whole weekend with a parent or grandparent in the same boat, which is more or less the entire point of running a derby out of a family marina.
A young angler in a bucket hat and sunglasses holds a prize envelope beside the announcer, the bay and score sheet behind them. A teenage angler in an orange long-sleeve shirt holds a blue envelope while the announcer speaks into the microphone. A young angler stands between two adults holding a plaque and an envelope while a ring of onlookers photograph the moment.
Youth awards. Note the wall of phones in the last frame — that is what a proud family looks like from the front.

What the photos do not show

The setup: rods broken down and racked, fish boxes rinsed, the scale packed up, folding tables carried back inside. The volunteers who kept the board current all weekend. The captains who spent Saturday night comparing notes on depth and speed instead of sleeping. A tournament looks like a leaderboard from the outside and like a to-do list from the inside, and Fair Haven has both handled.

What carries the day, though, is the same thing every year: this is a working marina on a small bay, and for one weekend it fills up with people who genuinely want to be there. The awards are just the moment everyone finally stands still long enough to notice.

See you next season

Congratulations to every angler who fished the 2025 Fair Haven Challenge, and thank you to the crews, families, and volunteers who made awards day feel like the end of something worth doing.

Watch for next season’s Fair Haven Challenge dates and details.