Last day of the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo

After six long days of fishing and fun, the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo will finally be wrapping up tonight in Gulfport.

Arts and crafts, carnival rides, live entertainment, and lots of excitement have filled Jones Park over the past week. Hundreds of fishermen have been out at sea trying to catch some big fish that will help them score some cash.

Two lucky winners will be taking the grand prize of $25,000 each for the record breaking sting ray and tiger shark catches. Mike Garrett took home the first place prize for the largest shark which weighed in at 675 pounds.

Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo President Richard Valdez tells News 25 about the importance the community plays in the success of the event.  “It’s been around for 71 years and the whole thing is we rely on their support, coming through the gate. That’s one of our big ways to make money to put this event on for the fisherman, the fisherman don’t pay to enter our event. We do a huge kids fish rodeo, which is 120 kids who fished it this year. We had 175 fishermen out there for the two bounties, and we had hundreds of fishermen in the regular rodeo.”

You can catch the Gulfport fireworks tonight at 8:45 from the rodeo. The event is expected to run until midnight.