This year’s TackleWorld Tri-Estuary fishing competition, run by the Merimbula Big Game and Lakes Angling Club, was again a huge success with a record number of entries.
Competition organiser David Dulhunty thanked to the generosity of their major sponsors TackleWorld Merimbula and Fyshwick as well as Diawa and local businesses, for ensuring they could offer fantastic prizes.
“We had a total of 61 prizes worth over $5,000 as well as monster raffles at the Friday night briefing and Sunday afternoon presentation,” Dulhunty said.
The weather was kind over the two days so the many anglers and families had ideal fishing conditions. This resulted in all ten adult fish species going off as well as most of the junior categories.
“This year we had $700 worth of junior prizes only, with free entry. This resulted in a record number of junior entries and it was fantastic to see all those smiling little faces,” Dulhunty said.
Although there were prizes for ten different types of estuary fish, the major prizes were for Bream, Dusky Flathead and Jewfish.
Allan Pimm and Stuart Pentin tied at 383mm for the massive $1000 cash for longest Bream. Thus, under the rules of the competition, it had to go to the times the photos of the fish were taken on their mobile phones, to determine who caught their fish first. Allan prevailed for the $1000 with Stuart still happy with his $250 second place.
Junior Jaroy Palmer was all smiles with his $100 cash first place 316mm Bream and Clayton Bad scored $50 for second.
The standout fish for the whole competition was Dave Huntlys enormous 943mm Dusky Flathead, easily securing him the $500 first place with Mitch Vandermeulen taking the $150 second prize at 802mm.
The junior Dusky of $50 first went to Hal Riches with 668mm and the $30 second to Mitchell Westerway at 554mm.
David Dulhunty’s boat ‘Rascal’ targeted the very elusive Jewfish, the ‘ghost of the estuaries’ with a sleepover on the Bega river Saturday night. This resulted in his wife Marci Dulhunty scoring the John McDermott Automotive sponsored $300 first prize with a 905mm Jewy and junior Jemma Pollock a 826mm Jewy.
Eleven-year-old Jemma had also paid her adult entry, which helped her secure the $100 prize for second place. These were the only two jewfish caught.
The whole competition was based on photos on a ‘brag matt’. It was then up to each individual angler to either keep or release their fish. It was great to see that most of the fish were actually released with only the really good eating fish like Whiting being kept.
With the comp growing in popularity, the Club promises even bigger and better things next year.
