The Daiwa Irish Pairs is a sea angling festival held in Dingle every September. Attracting many visitors from the UK and around Ireland, last week was the 40th running of the event. The festival is generously sponsored by Daiwa with additional support from Bassboots.
The festival consists of a number of pegged matches on venues around the peninsula, including Ventry, Cappa, Brandon and Inch. The remnants of a storm that brought some wild weather midweek forced the organisers to move competition times around, but luckily the weather settled and they were able to complete the programme.
During the week, there is also a competition for the best specimens of various species, including bull huss, bass, pollack, conger eel and more. Anglers can fish anywhere they like during the week to target these species, so it’s a nice mix of pegged competitions and more relaxed pleasure fishing. And we believe, plenty of pints and craic too!
After a week of intense but friendly competition, the pairs competition was won out by Dave Falk and Brett Cotter with a combined score of 22 points, just ahead of Tom Wells and Mick Tapsell on 23 points. Paul Stevens and Mick Webb took third place with 26 points (A zone win is 1 point, 2nd is 2, etc.)
The top individual angler was Kerryman David O’Sullivan, with 6 points and 22 fish for 504 points.
Specimen Fish
We are always interested in these results, as it shows off some of the great fish available to anglers on the Dingle Peninsula.
James Raymond won the Top Fish of the Week with a fantastic bull huss of 109cm, which was actually caught in a pegged match early in the week! We’d love to get a fish like that in one of our matches!!
Runner-Up Specimen of the Week was won by Gary Hazelgrove with a mullet of 57cm
Some of the species winners were as follows:
Bull Huss (next best after Fish of the Week) – David O’Sullivan 102cm
Wrasse – Tom Wells 50cm
Flounder – John Dixon 44cm
Pollack – Wayne Stephenson 68cm
Thornback Ray – Ben Butler 58cm
Painted Ray – Troy Francis 58cm
Mullet – Gary Hazelgrove 57cm
Dab – Dave Falk 31cm
Bass – Dave Falk 61cm
