The Kentucky Derby may attract a few more people, but how many of those horse fans go home with a catch of the day?

The Scott Brow Fishing Derby - set for Saturday in Northport, a full week ahead of the horse race -  has become a staple for children and their parents who have come to embrace getting up at or before dawn to sit on the bank of a pond watching a bobber.

Sometimes, the bobber is moved by a rainbow trout. That’s when the fun begins.

Alan Mork of Northport has watched those sinking bobbers nearly all his life, and has passed that excitement on to his 5-year-old daughter, Cassidy.

The Northport kindergartner caught her first trout on the last Saturday in April two years ago from the Northport mill pond. She had a hot pole last year, too.

“She’s already talking about it,” said Alan Mork of his daughter and the Northport fish derby. Mork expects to start the coffee for parents of the children between 4 and 5 a.m. — which is still nothing like the early mornings he spent as a kid at the mill pond.

Mork, who grew up in Northport, would some nights as a youngster camp out along the banks of the mill pond on the evening before the contest. Since “opening day” for trout season officially began at midnight, he and close buddies Doug Dalzell, Gary Bissell and Tim Cook would get a head start on the morning fishermen.

“We use to camp or start fighting right at midnight,” said Mork.

The event is sponsored by the Northport Sportsman Club, which has ordered hundreds of rainbow trout in the 10- to 12-inch range to be planted this week. That gives the trout a chance to adapt to their new environment — and get hungry.

The club always buys a few larger trout, 20 inches or longer, to create some exciting moments for young fishermen who are awarded prizes for the largest fish caught.

Actually, prizes are awarded to just about any youngster who catches a fish, with the smaller gifts ranging from fishing equipment to rod and reel packages. Credit area businesses for picking up much of the cost.

Those larger trout being planted in the mill pond are probably about the same size as caught by young Scott Brow in the 1970s. His mother, Ann, remembers the time Scott caught a steelhead in an area stream on his way to school. “The cooks kept in the refrigerator for him,” she said.

She said that the derby has become a community and family tradition. She and her husband, Bernard, have three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren who started fishing careers at the derby.

Scott Brow died in a car accident on M-22 southwest of Northport in 1973 at the age of 18. The inaugural Scott Brow Fish Derby was held the following spring.

Scott’s sister, Lynn, is owner of Forget-Me-Not Florist in Suttons Bay. The derby, she said, is a wonderful way to keep her brother’s memory alive.

If not for his death, Lynn Brow said, her brother would likely be doing exactly what so many adults are doing on that same day — taking kids fishing.

The Brows grew up in Gibraltar, Mich., along Lake Erie where Scott would spend whatever spare time he could muster with a fishing pole in his hand. His aunt had a home off Cherry Bay, which often served as Scott Brow’s summer fishing camp before the family moved north.

“He loved kids, and he was always really good with kids,” said Lynn Brow. “(The derby) is a way for everyone to continue what he would be doing anyway.”