Faith Fest Fishing Rodeo Draws Over 100 to the Riverfront

The first lines hit the water at the Moss Point Downtown Riverfront a little after ten o’clock on Saturday morning, August 1, and by the time the last one came in four hours later, more than 100 people had fished the Escatawpa together. The Faith Fest Fishing Rodeo was free, it was open to anyone who wanted to come, and for one morning it turned the downtown waterfront into the busiest stretch of river in Jackson County.

Moss Point Parks and Recreation built the day in partnership with the Moss Point Police Department and Jackson County Recreation, and the idea behind it was simple enough to explain in a sentence. Get the churches of this city, their youth groups, and every family willing to wake up early onto the same bank on the same morning, hand a rod to anybody who did not bring one, and see what happens.

Four hours on the Escatawpa

What happened was a good bit of tangled line and a lot of patience. Along the boardwalk the crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, grandfathers next to grandchildren, teenagers next to somebody else’s toddler. Rods and tackle were on hand for the families who arrived without them, which meant a fair number of children on that pier were casting for the first time in their lives, usually with a volunteer standing behind them talking them through it.

Farther up the bank, under the tents, a weigh station ran all morning. Kids carried their catch over in both hands, sometimes at a dead run, and a rotating crew of volunteers measured, recorded, and made sure every fish got the attention its owner thought it deserved. Games ran on the lawn behind the pier for the ones who needed a break from fishing, and food and cold water moved steadily from the coolers to whoever came looking.

Ministry tents lined the bank through all of it, which is where the event gets its name. Faith Fest is not a fishing tournament that happens to have churches at it. The congregations are the point, and on Saturday they came with their youth groups, set up their canopies, fed people, and prayed over the morning while the fishing went on in front of them.

Mayor Billy Knight Sr. spent the morning working his way down the waterfront, stopping at the tents, shaking hands with pastors, and talking with families along the rail.

Congratulations to our winners

When the awards were announced on the dock, the individual title went to a young angler named Phoenix, who brought in a catch of four fish and took home a trophy nearly as tall as the fish he caught to earn it.

The team title went to Amazing Grace Missionary Baptist Church and Pastor James Holloway, whose young anglers landed eight fish between them and collected their trophy in a row of matching red shirts.

The catch of the day, the single best fish anybody pulled out of the river all morning, was a red drum measuring twelve and a half inches.

The people who made it happen

A free event is never actually free. Somebody pays for it, and in this case three local businesses did. St. Joseph Hospice, the Loretta Jennings State Farm Agency, and CROSS Inc. underwrote the Faith Fest Fishing Rodeo so that no family who showed up on Saturday had to reach for a wallet. That is the entire reason a father could bring four kids down to the river and put a rod in every one of their hands.

The labor came from people who gave up their Saturday for it. The Moss Point High School Cross Country Team and the school’s JROTC cadets worked the event start to finish. The South 40 Coalition was there. Moss Point firefighters spent the morning down on the bank with the youngest anglers, kneeling in the grass to help unhook a fish and pose for a picture with the kid who caught it. Staff from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources came out to help residents understand the water in their own back yard.

Add every church that hauled a tent down to the riverfront and every parent who stood in the sun untangling somebody’s reel, and you have the actual staff of the Faith Fest Fishing Rodeo.

Watch the morning

Anyone who missed it can also watch the Faith Fest Fishing Rodeo video on YouTube.

What comes next

The riverfront will not stay quiet for long. Youth programs, recreation leagues, and seasonal registration all run through Moss Point Parks and Recreation, and everything on the schedule from here through the fall is posted on the Moss Point community events calendar. Anyone who watched the volunteers on Saturday and thought about doing that next time can sign up through the city volunteer page, and the City would be glad to have you.

To everyone who cast a line, cooked, cleaned up, drove a kid down to the water, or stood on that pier and cheered for somebody else’s child, thank you. That is Moss Point, and Saturday looked exactly like it.

Story by Experienced Results.