 Well, the rain didn't keep folks from heading to downtown Aiken to celebrate the annual fish house parade today. Clayton Castle was there and has that story. It's the day after Thanksgiving, which means it's the day of the annual World Famous Fish House Parade in Aiken in preparation for the new season. And no, not the holiday season. We decided to have a parade with fish houses because now everybody's kind of getting ready for that season again. So we're getting ready for fish house fishing and it's just, it's a great way to get people to come to town. This year saw a number of local entrants into the parade and some not from Aiken. One in particular had an inflatable so big, you'd think it was Thursday in New York City. We have the Wharf Resort and we've got a great restaurant there and we had named it about five years ago. We called it Toucan's Restaurant and we decided to go ahead and get our inflatable and bring them to parade. So that's Tito the Toucan. Darren says this is his fourth time in the fish house parade and the theme of the parade is what keeps bringing him back. Well, Lake Milax is all about ice fishing so with it being about ice fishing we like to come up and support the area and it's uh we're small town people and this is a small town and it's fun to come up and see all the people and have a good time. Many of the entrants had stories to tell as well including the story of Tame Fish Lake. The one of the things that it was known for was the Tame Fish where one of the brothers would go down and feed the fish every single day and soon they were coming up and feeding from his hand. Well then they started letting the people do it. They had a great big bell uh on a stone arch and they would ring the bell and the fish would literally come to the vibration of the bell. The annual fish house parade also brings a positive economical impact to the Aiken community. We can bring three to four thousand people into our community for a parade. It's just huge economically for our young retailers and it's really good for our business community. The parade was the pinnacle of a day filled with fun laughs and smiles in Aiken ringing in the new season reporting in Aiken Clayton Castle Lakeland News. This was the 27th year for the annual fish house parade in Aiken. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.