The weather gods were unusually kind to us on Sunday 1st October as the Interclub competition was actually held on the date it was planned for! This competition is an annual event, aiming for the single best specimen fish caught by members of SMAC, Langstone Harbour Fisherman’s Association, ECA and Southsea Sea Angling Club. ECA won last year so they were hosting this year’s competition. We were secretly feeling a little bit hopeful because our top competition were either missing or hung over.

Those that were unable to compete were following the progress of the competition on the SMAC WhatsApp channel. We were a bit worried when Ray could only show us a spider crab but things started looking up when Dave caught a miniscule flat-thing. At least it was a fish. We had a long way to go but Dave showed us the way with a 8lb Blonde Ray. Soon after Dave topped that with a turbot but when we compared the size of his hands to the size of the turbot we realised the blonde ray was a lot nearer the specimen size. Rumours started flying around of an 11lb 4oz Small-Eyed Ray boated by an ECA member. Something had to be done, and Ray Plomer did it by catching a nice Bull Huss which came up at 112.5% of a Specimen weight and sealed the day. Chants of “It’s Coming Home” could be heard which soon faded away as we realised that Ray was fishing for LHFA this time and not SMAC.  Ray still scored though, as he appears on our Club Competition Standing sheet. He may even be in the running for Fish Of The Month but we’ll have to wait for the October meeting to find out.

Many thanks to ECA for hosting and organising the event, congratulations Ray Plomer and LHFA for winning this years’ event and thanks to all the competitors for being great sports and taking part.