By CRAIG FREILICH

Waddington up by 40 votes...Roscoe ahead by 200...Waddington leading by 6...and so it goes as the voting for World Fishing Network's Ultimate Fishing Town USA contest heads into the final stretch this weekend and finishes up on Tuesday.

The St. Lawrence River town and the Sullivan County town have been swapping the lead back and forth, easily ahead of all other contenders throughout the country.

The leaderboard at www.worldfishingnetwork.com at mid-afternoon Friday showed Roscoe with 181,190 votes, Waddington 181,092, fewer than a hundred votes separating the two. The next minute it said Roscoe 181,257 and Waddington 181,190 -- fewer than 70 votes apart.

And that is how it has been going since the final round of online voting began.

Waddington is hoping that a systematic approach to boosting their tally will see the village prevail when voting concludes May 31.

People can vote four times a day from their email addresses to www.worldfishingnetwork.com, once every six hours, but volunteers are lining up to cast votes by proxy for those who can’t make it to their computers every time they can vote.

It's not too late to get your votes in, whether you do it yourself or the Waddington Chamber of Commerce volunteers do it for you.

First time voters need to follow these directions:

1. Go to www.wfnfishingtown.com/town/waddington-ny and cast a vote for Waddington.

2. Individuals will then receive an e-mail from WFN to verify their e-mail vote – and must respond to the WFN by clicking on the link.

3. This process must be repeated for every e-mail account an individual has.

4. Votes may be cast every six hours until May 31, the last day of voting.

Once the initial vote and verification are done, anyone who wants votes cast by proxy can send an email, specifically giving the Waddington Chamber of Commerce permission to vote on their behalf, to waddingtonchamber@gmail.com. Include your name.

World Fishing Network’s online contest will award $25,000 top prize to the winning town and a promotional TV spot.

The winner will be announced by June 10.