Past Seneca Derby Winners Graphed

[hermit]

Got curious so I plotted the weights of the winners over the years.

 

 

Some real nice fish in the 60s, and an anomalously large brown in the late 90s are the things that pop out to me.  A nice trend upward over the past 10 years or so, with the average winner of the last 5 years being larger than any other period since the 60s.  Interestingly the huge winners from the 60's still skew the overall trend line down despite the recent turnaround.  (The trend from 1975 to the present is upwards however.)  I did include this year's current leader in the graph, which obviously may change.  Hope some of you find it interesting!

 

Edit:  pic got hammered by compression on upload, if anyone wants a higher-res image of this PM me.

 

Edit 2:  Some real heavies this year!  The below is going off the 4 PM Sunday postings so it should get even more impressive.

 

BRIANBOB93's 13.44 lb lake trout is in 5th place.  (I'm guessing that's you b/c of your post and the leaderboard.)  In 33/49 derbies that would have been the grand prize winner! 

 

If you take that to 10 places, the "lightest" fish is a 12.58 laker.  That would have been a grand prize winner in 19 derbies!

Edited May 25, 2014 by hermit

[AnglingAddict]

Nice!! Sounds like something I would do.  You must be an engineer.  Just glancing at it you could probably get a better trendline by fitting a polynomial to it...would give you a better idea as to the weight of next year's winner if you are using the trendline for predictive measures.  Pretty cool!

[hermit]

Hey glad you like it!  Not an engineer although almost at one point.  I, uh, do this for fun.  

 

Here's a version with a 2 factor polynomial and a 5 year moving average.  Both clearly show the good fishing in the 60s and again recently.  Definitely some of the best fish in the last 40 years!

 

 

Edit: changed graph trend titles

Edited May 26, 2014 by hermit

[Zebedee]

Very cool!

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[panfisher]

hermit.....Just saw this. Looks like something folks who think mathematically would pass their time with (nerdy brilliance). I tend to be a "pictures" guy (duh). But your graph shows some nice pictures (nerdly duh!). What kills me is that, what....17.5lb brown caught in '98! Any "photo" pics anywhere of that baby....? 

[ifishy]

this is a great trend line of the winners I would be curious to see a similar plot but based on the average weight of the top 5 fish.  this was my 5th year in the derby and it seemed like not only the winer was big but the places were really tight at the top this year lots of big fish would be interesing to see if the trend changes or becomes even more dramatic when you include multiple data points not just the largest which could be a data outlier.  anyone know where to find full results from previous derbys? 

[Sk8man]

I don't know about online but they used to have a scrap book of pics and I think the standings boards were pictured as well. It used to be kept at derby headquarters at the Geneva Chamber.....my recollection after fishing 40 plus Seneca Trout derbies is that this year had the biggest finishers behind the winner in the ones I fished.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Sk8man

[hermit]

Hey guys yeah knowing all the weights would be cool and if someone has the data somewhere I'd be happy to plug it in but I don't get to Geneva often.  That brown in '98 and the two sub-10 lb lakers the following years are real outliers.   A pic would be nice!  I remember another brown ~18 lbs a bass guy brought to the scales at the Red Cross maybe 8, 9 years ago?   Great fish, must have been footballs.  (I didn't see that one either.)

 

Sk8man is right though about the fishing, the number of fish that would have won previous derbies was amazing.  I wasn't there but the numbers don't lie... sounds like a stellar weekend all around!

[Sk8man]

It is also noteworthy that many of the "runners up" in years past were primarily in the high 9's through high 10's and only separated by hundreths of a pound in many cases as happened to me several times (bumped out of first in the brown division by 1/100th once and a couple of times with lakers where bumped a couple places by just 4 /100th's separating three places) Seldom have the runners up been 11 pounds or over in the past and the winning fish have been just a couple pounds larger in most cases. I wish I had the data itself to share but I'm pretty sure my memory on that at least isn't far off. The results this year with many big fish in the upper ranks is exceptional. I did miss some derbies in the mid sixties when I was overseas in the military but that has been the case from the 70's onward in my recollection.

[Splitshot115]

         Hermit,

  The brown you spoke of was caught on Keuka, If I'm not mistaken he got four out of five or his boat had all the winning browns.  Talk about a banner day.  

[Iron Duke]

Hermit,

The brown you spoke of was caught on Keuka, If I'm not mistaken he got four out of five or his boat had all the winning browns. Talk about a banner day.

Those browns were all from Keuka and same group of guys... The guys were anchored up on a house boat in is favorite brown hole.. He told me that they where on a house boat with rods off all sides with bells on them, they would play cards until they heard a bell go off and it was a Chinese fire drill,all of them trying to fit through the same door to get out to the rods.. lol... Definitely was a banner day....

Mike

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Edited June 6, 2014 by Iron Duke

[hermit]

Great story!  I must be thinking of another fish... or else it was a tall tale, but the story I heard was a guy fishing for bass saw the brown in shallow water, dropped a jig on it's head, and wham fish on.  Also weighed in just before closing.  Maybe it was a  smaller (but still winning) brown in 18 fow?  That jogs a bit of memory.

[ifishy]

I will say this with the runners up being as big as they were and the number of 9 and 10 pound fish that I heard about and even caught of few of there is a couple of real nice healthy year classes that are starting to get big.  with the reduced stocking and higher bag limit keeping the population from stunting we may see big fish for several years to come with a continuing upward trend.  getting into this derby and staring to fish the fingers is one of the only two good things that came out of me moving to geneva.