The crowd at this year’s Fish Day was smaller than usual, and the revenue taken in by the nine civic groups that sell fish and chips at the festival was down as well, event participants said.

The reasons were varied, festival participants said, and included the lack of a Fish Day parade, bad weather, road construction and the economy.

Representatives of several civic organizations said their revenue was down 10% to 25%.

“For a while, I thought Fish Day was going to be a bust,” said John Sigwart, who organizes the Fish Day stand for the Kiwanis Club. “It was scary. But it was salvaged by a good crowd toward evening.”

Although Sigwart said the Kiwanis Club brought in about 25% less in revenue this year, Mike Husting of the Lions Club said their revenue was only down about 10%.

“We are down this year over last year, but not by a significant amount,” he said. “We basically lost the revenue we would have made during the parade.

“Leading up to Fish Day, some club members were leery of how we were going to do because there wasn’t a parade. It didn’t hurt us as much as we all feared.”

The club traditionally has operated a fish and chips cart along the parade route.

The club may have benefitted from the fact its stand is the first one inside the main gate, Husting said.

It is also across from the Blues Stage, which drew a large crowd, he said.

This year’s Fish Day parade was cancelled, a controversial decision made by festival organizers who cited construction on Wisconsin Street — the traditional route — as the reason. Other potential routes for the parade were not viable, they said.

Sigwart, who said he often walks through the crowd around the club’s stand during the festival, said he noticed fewer tourists and more local residents attended Fish Day this year.

“I knew everybody,” he said. “Maybe it was because of the forecast, which said there was the potential for storms throughout the day. Maybe people just said, ‘Why go to Fish Day? It’ll be a bust.’”

The fact that prices increased a little this year for beer, fish and chips helped keep their losses to a minimum, Sigwart and Husting said.

Mary Monday, chairman of Fish Day, said the number of people attending the festival was steady throughout the day, but acknowledged that attendance was down this year. This, she said, is what festivals around the country are experiencing.

“There were so many things going on this year,” she said. “No one thing was responsible for the lower attendance, but there were several factors — the weather, (road) construction and the economy — that taken all together contributed to it.

“All in all, it went very, very well and the crowd was steady. We were down, but we weren’t down bad.”

Monday said the Marching Unit Showcase, which replaced the parade and featured several drum and bugle corps, was a success.

“We heard a lot of positive comments about having the opportunity to see the units perform and be so close to them,” she said.

The performance of “High School Musical” was also popular, she said.

“Everything else went according to plan, other than Mother Nature,” Monday said, noting that it rained during the run and walk that opened the festival and was foggy during the fireworks.

It was so foggy at night that the crowd that gathered at the lakefront could not see the fireworks.

“You couldn’t even tell what color they were,” Sigwart said. “Most people were stunned by the fact they couldn’t see the fireworks, and they left.”

Monday said organizers did not consider postponing the fireworks.

“Fish Day is the world’s largest one-day outdoor fish fry. We do it all in one day,” she said. “We didn’t postpone the run because of the rain.”

Port Washington police reported that officers issued 13 citations for open intoxicants and two citations for underage driving during Fish Day. Two people were cited for disorderly conduct, including a 28-year-old Port man who got into a fight with two other people late that night.