After being postponed from 31st July due to adverse wind conditions we were all delighted that the reserve date of 14th August held good, and the competition was ON! With executive direction from last year’s winner Bill Arnold, and ably organised by Steve Kelly, the competition attracted entries from SMAC, surrounding clubs and others.

The objective of the competition was to catch as many different fish species between 8am and 6pm, and proof of catch was a photograph before the fish were returned to the sea.  As you might expect, several anglers vying for a prize position caught the same number of species and in anticipation of that Steve had devised a clever scoring system which weighted the most likely species to be caught according to rarity. Mackerel, dogfish and pout for example scored zero as they pretty much give themselves up. Turbot on the other hand scored 10. We’d all like to catch more turbot!

Fishing ended at 6pm, the final count was closed at 6:30pm and the winners were announced at 7pm.

In reverse order, the overall winners were:

12th Steve Kelly 3 species 0 points
11th Eleanor Atkins 3 species 0 points ( Ladies Trophy winner)
10th Ken Farmer 3 species 5 points
9th Steve Andrews 3 species 7 points
8th Ray Plomer 3 species 7 points
7th Chris Ellis 4 species 0 points
6th Luke Scott 5 species 0 points
5th Lloyd Jones 6 species 0 points
4th Dan Lumsden 11 species 12 points
3rd Bill Arnold 11 species 22 points
2nd Pete Churchill 12 species 12 points
1st Wayne Comben 13 species 20 points

One of Wayne’s species was a 20lb stingray, a personal best and not a fish anyone expected to see on the list! Congratulations to Wayne Comben, Competition Trophy winner and also to Eleanor Atkins, the Ladies Trophy winner. There were no Junior entries.

It was a great day in glorious weather. We would like to thank all our sponsors for their generous donations of prizes: Victory Gas & Heating; Normark UK; Baits R Us; Fishon Bait and Tackle; SMDAC; British Big Game Fishing; Newnham Builders; Cosham Angling; Sportsmans Knight; Anglers Edge; Marina Bar.

Photos from Steve Andrews and Steve Kelly.