Hundreds of visitors flocked to Dead Horse Ranch State Park on Saturday, Sept. 24, to enjoy a day of fishing, canoeing and additional festivities at the annual Verde River Days festival.
Arizona Game & Fish Department provided fishing pole rentals and bait to families who wanted to try their luck at catching large mouth bass, bluegill and crappie at the park’s second lagoon.
“Today is also National Hunting and Fishing Day, so it’s a good reason to get out to the Verde Valley, to the park and the river, and get away from electronics,” Game Warden T.J. Bagley said.
Bagley said AZGFD had 100 poles available for rent, and the lagoon was recently stocked to increase the chances of success.
“A lot of [families] haven’t been fishing before,” Bagley said. “If they need instructions on how to cast or rig it up, or if there’s time to help them on the water we’ll take them aside to help them bait their hooks so that there’s not an incident.”
“They really enjoy [learning to fish],” he said. “When I was a kid growing up, learning to fish, there was a lot of good experiences that I still remember all these years later; the same goes for teaching.”
Beyond the AZGFD tent, a variety of nonprofit organizations were present, including the Rotary Club of the Verde Valley, who sponsor the event’s rubber duck race, a crowd favorite.
The Rotary Club “has sponsors that donate at certain different levels and they get a certain amount of tickets for the race,” said the club’s past president and volunteer, Eric Young. “Then they open a gate on a canal and the water flows down and they put all the ducks in the water. It’s maybe 100 yards long and it all takes about 35 or 40 seconds.”
Various musicians performed throughout the day, including headliner Tommy Anderson, aka Tommy Rocks, Verde Valley Voices and Michael Midkiff.
Later in the afternoon, HDH Powerhouse Gym took to the stage to perform a variety of martial arts demonstrations.
While the scent of grilling hamburgers filled the air, festival goers wandered the park’s sprawling
grounds, visited with Smokey Bear as he made his rounds or rented kayaks at the third lagoon.
For those wanting to get closer to nature, a variety of friendly non-poisonous snakes were ready for handling at the Sonoran Reptiles tent. The venomous varieties — rattlesnakes and a Gila monster — were kept in locked containers for viewing only.
“It’s usually the only experience people actually have [handling snakes],” Sonoran Reptiles board member and handler Mark LaPierre said. “For most people, it’s a very positive experience.”
LaPierre said that when it comes to snakes, “most people believe what they see on TV; they think it’s real but it’s not.”
“Snakes are not aggressive,” he said. “Rattlesnakes for example, most people get bitten because they’re messing with them. Snakes don’t have emotions, they don’t get mad. People anthropomorphize onto them. It’s usually young men, after a few brewskis and wanting to show how brave they are, but it’s the snakes that are deathly afraid.”
At different points in the day, traffic going into and out of the park was bumper-to-bumper, with long wait times.
A representative of the park said between 1,000 and 3,000 people were expected to attend the event, which began at 9 a.m. and lasted until 3 p.m.
