Catch a tagged trout and have the chance to be a millionaire

Labor Day Weekend, visitors to Mammoth Lakes, Calif. will be able to enjoy live bluegrass, country and classical music, a kids' fishing pond, kids' fishing games, T-shirt painting, trout cooking demonstrations, the Festival of Fine Art, and the second annual Million Dollar Trout Competition, which will be held on Sept. 2-3-4.

Mammoth Lakes is located just off of U.S. 395, about 120 miles south of Carson City and about 40 miles north of Bishop.

That Million Dollar Trout Competition is produced by the Town of Mammoth Lakes in co-operation with Mono County Tourism, the Mammoth Art Guild, and the Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game.

If you like to fish, all you have to do is pay $25 to enter that competition and try to catch a tagged trout at a number of different locations in that general area of California.

If you catch one of those tagged trout, you will be entered in a drawing, where you could hit the jackpot and win all kinds of fabulous prizes such as $100,000 or $500,000 or the grand prize of $1,000,000! Not too shabby for going fishing and catching a trout!

The Grand Prize Drawing will be held on Monday at 1 p.m. in Sam's Wood Park in Mammoth.

If you're interested, a total of 500 Alper's Trophy Rainbow Trout will be tagged and then planted proportionally in 19 bodies of water in that area. Those waters are:

Bridgeport area: Bridgeport Reservoir, Lower Twin Lake and Upper Twin Lake.

June Lakes Loop: Grant, Gull, June and Silver Lakes.

Leevining area: Lundy Lake and Saddlebag Lake.

Mammoth Lakes area: Convict Lake, Crowley Lake, George Lake, Mamie Lake, Mary Lake, Lower Twin Lake and Upper Twin Lake.

Virginia Lakes area: Trumbull Lake, Big and Little Virginia Lakes.

Here is some misc. info:

The registration fee is $25 (pre-registration) or $30 if registering on-site. Ten dollars of that fee will be a donation to the Hot Creek Hatchery Foundation.

The Hot Creek Hatchery, located near Mammoth Lakes, is one of the largest in California.

The Hot Creek Hatchery Foundation is a charitable, non-profit, public-benefit corporation, which is charged with raising funds to maintain and improve the hatchery operations.

There is no minimum age required to participate.

The participant or parent/legal guardian must have a valid Social Security Number.

There is no limit on the number of tagged trout one angler may catch during the competition.

Competition hours are sunrise to sunset on Saturday and Sunday, and Sunrise to 11 a.m. on Monday.

Contestant must present tagged trout to an official Troutstock check-in point on the same day caught. (See map in registration kit for locations by area).

Over the course of the derby, any registered angler who catches one (or more) of the tagged trout will have that tag number entered in the Grand Prize Drawing.

At that Grand Prize Drawing, the first tag number drawn will be eligible for $1,000,000. To win that $1,000,000, that first tag number drawn must match a randomly pre-selected number.

The second tag number drawn will be eligible for $500,000, if it matches that pre-selected number.

The third tag number will win $100,000, if it matches.

The fourth for $50,000, the fifth for $25,000, then the 6th through the 10th tag numbers will win $10,000, if they match.

The 11th through the 100th tag numbers will win $5,000 by matching. The 101st tag number drawn will win a prize package.

Finally:

"We would love nothing more than for a participant to win a large monetary prize and we very much want all participants to go home happy," said Mammoth Lakes Special Event Manager Sandra Di Domizo. "So, we worked hard to ensure that we have great prize packages waiting for everyone."

For information and detailed schedules of events or to register online, go to www.troutstock.com or call the Mammoth Lakes Visitors Bureau at (888) GO MAMMOTH or (760) 934-2712.

If you enter the Troutstock Competition and if you catch a tagged trout and if you win a huge sum of money in that special drawing, just remember that you read about it here on the Outdoors page.

Be generous to Little Donnie Q!

-- Bet Your favorite Pigeon

Bet your favorite pigeon that he can't tell you how you will receive that million dollars if you are the Grand Prize Winner.

If he grins and says, "In the event the contestant wins one million dollars ($1,000,000), the prize will be payable in forty (40) equal annual installments of twenty five thousand ($25,000) each, without interest," he has also read 2006 contest rule No. 15.

-- Don Quilici is the Outdoors editor for the Nevada Appeal.