I want to take a moment to wrap up a few thoughts and tie up those loose ends that always seem to exist…

Overall the 17 Rivers Striper Tournament was a lot of fun and the photos we posted on the website effectively illustrate how beautiful the region is and how great the fishing can be. We are lucky to live here in the mid-coast region and we have a truly world-class fishery right in our backyard. Their are some huge stripers out there and we illustrated that by posting such fish photos on this site. The anglers who caught these stripers should be pleased… many of the contending catches represented “once in a life time” fish.

With respect to the website… The development of this site was done very quickly. We didn’t actually start work on the site until early July. Aaron Pastor and I really “busted it out” to design and implement the sites structure which morphed into something pretty neat! Thanks so much for your help Aaron… I couldn’t have done it without you. Personally, I am very pleased by the end result. The blog structure allowed for a dynamic environment in which to develop posts and communications to all visitors. The photo slide-shows were very slick bits of code we inserted that allowed for ease of viewing with respect to a large number of images. And the rotational ad banner was a nice addition which helped promote the businesses that directly sponsored the event.

Now that the tournament is over, I want to share some of the statistics regarding website use… To date we’ve had 1,784 unique website visitors, many returned repeatedly,… some 4,120 visitor’s in total. On average, the sites had 52 distinct visitors per day. Those visitors viewed over 46,000 pages and the website has recorded over 215,000 hits. For a local striper tournament, that was conceived in mid-June and didn’t have a fully functional website until mid-August, these numbers are pretty respectable. We will keep the site up for a while while we determine the future of the tournament.

Many have inquired about whether we will do the tournament again in 2008… Personally, I’d like nothing better than to make the tournament an annual event. It is my intent to seek funding and pledges of support for a 2008 tournament. Much of the infrastructure needed to support the tournament we now have in place, and running the event this year has provided insight into how we could do it differently to make improvements and achieve a greater level of success.

Over the winter, I’d like to ask for input from those who participated, as either sponsors or fishermen. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this. In order to do this again, we certainly need broader corporate sponsorship, State and local support and broader angler participation. Ultimately, we need to cover the costs. Please use the Contact Us form to send us your comments. I will share those comments openly and post them to gain greater perspective and add to the pool of knowledge. I look forward to hearing from you and hope a robust dialog develops.