CastingKids Comes to the Hatchie Fall Fest

New to this year's Hatchie Fall Fest is a CastingKids competition. Those who are familiar with the world of fishing know about CastingKids. It's an event where kids ages 7-14 flip, pitch and cast a hookless lure to a bull's-eye target. Scoring is based on a points system and the angler with the most points wins.

The Bassmaster CastingKids program is the most successful youth fishing program in the world, according to the ESPN website. Kids have been awarded more than $3 million in awards, prizes and scholarship resulting from the competition.

The event will be sponsored by the Haywood County Jr. BASS Club. Two winners, one in each age group (7-10 years of age and 11-14 years of age), will move on to the state competition.

This will be a great opportunity for future angler and just plain fun; and hopefully become an annual event at our festival.

Hatchie Fall Fest T-shirt Now Available

You can now pre-order your 2008 Hatchie Fall Fest t-shirt online.

This year's shirts feature the winning t-shirt design on the front left chest area and a specially-designed graphic on the back that follows the guitar theme of the winning design. We've also incorporated some paw prints as tribute to the Haywood County Tomcats.

This is the 5th annual festival and I hope you will make plans to attend on October 18. Check out the complete Schedule of Events.

Hatchie Fall Fest Full of Firsts

We're in the home stretch. A little more than a month and the 5th Annual Hatchie Fall Fest will be history. I'm amazed at how quickly our little festival has grown. The first year we estimated a few hundred attended. Last year our estimation reached about 5,000. And not only grown in attendance, but in activities, too.

This year we are adding several new features that we hope will become festival favorites. The Tennessee Trash Car Show joins the line-up this year making the festival a two-day event and includes a Cruise-In on Saturday night.

A Motorcycle Card Run and Community Breakfast are also planned (more on these next week). We've also added some vendor awards that will be presented to those participating in the festival. Several categories are planned including "Best of the Fest," to be presented to the vendor who really stands out.

Donnie Hatcher's Autoplex will be giving away a big screen TV during Mickey Utley's performance Saturday evening. You can register all day at the Hatcher booth, where the TV will be on display, and then be present to win that night.

We also conducted our first t-shirt design contest this year. So you see, the 2008 Hatchie Fall Fest is full of firsts. But we haven't forgotten your favorites and promise lots of children's activities, live music all day and a family-friendly atmosphere. And as always, admission is FREE. October 18 is the day ... mark the calendar now!