Dunmore East Food Festival Boat Comp " St Micheal"

Competitors Barry, Connor, David, Siert, Martyn, Neville, Brian

Hi,
Well this was a trial competition to be run in conjunction with the Dunmore East Food Festival. The day started well as the forecast was nothing like the previous nights doom and gloom spread by the RTE forecast, with nice sunny skies and light winds. & competitors turned out booted and spurred for a bit of fun, with a serious competitive side to the day. Fair play to Angus who had got up nice and early to go and get some fresh bait for the day thus saving us a lot of time looking for them!!( now how many skippers would do that !)
So boat draw was done and we headed off to the 3 mile rock, it was decided to do two 3 hour comps , using EFSA score cards and rules, all on the drift, with a change of boat positions at half time, ( more on this later!|)
The main bet of the day was how long Neville could hold out before he ground baited the swim !!! Mainly due to over indulgence on gorse wine homebrew the night before. On arrival at the 3 mile rock, it was lines down, and immediately Angus was having a busy day with fish coming up all round the boat.
Siert was off to a flyer , along with Barry and Martyn keeping in touch. Lots of nice codling and ling and Pollock were making an appearance, though not big, a nice size, and well over the 20 cm size limit. A smattering of Gurnards and wrasse upped the species count. As the the first comp progressed the odds on nevs ground bait fell to evens, but he was holding out and still managing to catch fish!
Time was called on the first comp and it was fairly clear that seirt had won the session, with 257 points with Barry second on 226 points and Martyn 3rd on 195 points, with ling , codling and Pollock making up most of the catch, 11 species recorded in first session. The pressure was now on Nev, he was looking really peaky!! Many things were said and some pretty gross things attempted to get Nev over the side, but the knowledge that it would be appearing on U tube was enough for him to hold out! At this point it was discussed about re-drawing boat positions, with a resounding not interested !! Everyone was happy where they were, so that’s how it stayed for next comp.
By now the wind had gone and it was a lovely hot day, perfect conditions for fishing, and again from the off fish were regularly coming over the side, ( or not as Barry will regret at the end of the comp!) This time it was the back of the boat that fished well , and the 1st session leader was having finding it hard to pick up fish, Barry was off to a flyer this time and Connor and Brian at the back were fairly noticing up scoring ling and codling. It was all looking like it would be very close as we were going to add the scores from the two sessions for the overall winner.
Lines up was called at 4.30 and fish were still coming up, it was going to be close.
Results were, Siert 1st 465 points, Barry 2nd 463 points, Martyn 3rd 449 points with 4th to 7th place only separated by 8 points!!!
A total of 412 Scoring fish were boated with 13 species being registered, a great days competitive fishing. It was then back to Dunmore for the food festival and a few pints, but not before Martyn had to do a filleting demo with a couple of Waterford’s finest chefs cooking the fish on the spot, ( no pressure!) and thanks to whoever slipped in the Small gurnard for filleting !!!
Next year this will be on the competition calendar with more boats and more sponsorship , watch this space for further news . A big thanks to all the local sponsors, and to Angus for looking after everyone onboard so well, and keeping the scores!! A busy job on this trip)
( ps Nev managed to hold out, amazing the willpower with the threat of U tube Fame, fair play to him only 10 points behind the leader in the 2nd session!!!)
Regards
screeming

well rte weather wrong again nice one.first off fair play to angus for the time and effort in organising this competition (esp the early morning mackerel for us no other skipper would do that).
super days competition fishing cant see why there was never boat competitions held out of waterford.the last 3 years our club master angler competitions out of dunmore has seen some great competitions.
yesterday was hopefully the start of open competitions held locally ,as screeming said it will be bigger next year so keep the date free once it comes out and also next year we are holding the munster closed shore open in may.2 good opens to look forward too.
as for yesterday a dropped doggie as lifting in was bad luck and next cast even worse a poor cod prob well in size slipped out of my hand and over the side before i could measure it dose:).