The Rosslare Small Boats festival proved to be a great success again this year despite the challenging weather conditions for the competition. For the third time in the last four years ‘Screaming Reels’ from Rosie’s sea angling club in Cork won the competition with 24 different species of fish, beating 28 other boats from the UK.
The weather conditions proved to be very challenging for the competition with south westerly winds making boat fishing very difficult. However as the week wore on, conditions improved slightly and competitors managed to fish the normally four day competition in three days by launching their boats once from Kilrane in Rosslare and twice from Kilmore Quay and fishing restricted areas along the Wexford coast. The fishing was very good with 30 different species recorded.
The competition was exciting from start to finish due to the close results each day despite the changeable weather conditions. The overall results demonstrated this with first place going to ‘Screaming Reels’ (Martyn Rayner, Seirt Shults, Neville Murphy) with 24 species for 23.12kilos. They were followed closely in second place by ‘Uptide Girl’ (Gordon Thornes, Mike Roberts and John Williams from Wallasey in the UK) with 22 species for 25.15 kilos. In third place was ‘Nirvana’ (Richie Stead and Keith Pemberton from the Wirral Boat angling club in Liverpool) with 20 species for 13.78 kilos.
A great variety of fish were recorded during the week with 30 different types of species including coalfish, dogfish, dab, flounder, pollack, bull huss and some unusual species such as sea scorpion, shanny and tadpole fish. There were some fantastic specimen fish caught during the week including a Triggerfish of 2.32kilos caught by well known UK angler and writer Gordon Thornes from the boat ‘Uptide Girl’, which is very close to the Irish record of 2.54 kilos. There were two other specimens recorded, one a fine Ballan Wrasse of 3.16kilos caught by Neville Murphy from Cork and a specimen smoothound of 3.78 kilos caught by Seirt Shults from Dundalk. Both of these are from the winning boat ‘Screaming Reels’.
The heaviest round fish was a conger of 8.18kgs caught by Leslie Trish of ‘Seeker V’ from Liverpool and he was also awarded a perpetual trophy sponsored by Inland Fisheries Ireland for the biggest fish caught. The heaviest flat fish was a plaice of 0.80kilos caught by John Meaning from ‘Joe 90’ from the Isle of Wight. Lewis Radcliffe aged 15 from Wigan won best junior of the competition and he fished with his Dad Simon and Grandad on the boat ‘Cod n Bass’ which came 5th with 19 species for 13.04 kilos.
Next year’s event will take place from the 14th – 21st September 2013. Inland Fisheries Ireland would like to invite all small boat anglers to take part. Further information is available from Ms. Josie Mahon, Inland Fisheries Ireland, Tel: 01 278 7022 or email: [email protected]
