Record breaking snapper, kingfish and trevally were hauled in at this year’s D’Urville Island Fishing Competition.
The annual event, which is hosted by the D’Urville Island Fishing Club in association with the Wilderness Resort, reeled in about 57 vessels with about 200 anglers of all ages onboard from as far away as Christchurch and the North Island hoping to catch a Marlborough monster of the deep.
Organiser Cathy George says the “very busy” competition, held over the weekend, was split into nine different categories of fish species and prizes were allocated to the heaviest, longest and average sized fish.
She says, among the many weighed in, three fish tipped the competition scales.
These included a 26.96lb snapper caught by Blenheim fisherman, Greg Bennett, a 35kg kingfish caught by Phillip Steel, who is also from Blenheim, and a 7.9lb trevally caught by Nelson fisherman, Patric Lorandi.
Cathy says Nelson fisherman Shane Harwood was the overall winner having caught eight of the nine species.
“He was the lucky person who managed to catch that extra fish that got him through, and I heard that in the last hour or so he managed to catch that [eighth] species, and he was quite jubilant about that.”
Cathy says the competition was also hooked towards keeping healthy levels of fish in the local waters with kingfish entries based on length measurements before release. She says it was also about introducing fresh anglers to the sport.
“We’re trying to encourage the comradery of fishing, we’re not trying to encourage overfishing, we want the person who’s not too experienced in fishing to be able to win a really good prize as well.”
It was the first time the event was held over three days instead of the traditional two, with fishing beginning last Thursday.
“The previous year, when it was a two-day competition, we had to postpone the dates due to weather,” she says.
“Although our bay was really sheltered and it was a very safe competition because of the wind direction [this year], it was challenging for them out there with a bit of breeze with a little bit of chop in some places. But even though that had happened, there was still some record fish caught, so it goes to show that the competition and the conditions were ok.”
Cathy says $1000 was also raised for Coastguard Nelson.
