The weekend’s weather certainly started and finished on a wet note, but luckily it dried up sufficiently for us all to have a wonderful time.  The numbers of keen fisherpeople were down a bit on previous years, probably due to the fact that Easter fell so late in April, but that certainly didn’t damper the enthusiasm and atmosphere around the place.

We must express our thanks to our sponsors,  De Coro Fishing Supplies Ltd, Kilwell Sports Ltd and NZ Fishing News who produced some great prizes.  Sponsorship is not easy to get during these difficult economic times so we were very lucky indeed and really appreciated their support.

The overall heaviest snapper and heaviest boatbased snapper, was caught by Jonathan Hooker, weighing in at 5.13kgs.  Apparently this winning snapper took him by surprise while he was demonstrating to his crew how to strayline.  The second heaviest snapper was just under the winning weight and went to Jim Cullen (5.05kgs).  Nathan Jones produced an awesome kingfish at 12.10 kgs taking the heaviest other species prize, with Jim Cullen getting the second heaviest (4.4 kgs).  Darrin Baucke and Shayne Coombe took the prizes for heaviest and second heaviest kahawai (2.42 and 2.40kgs respectively).

Snapper (Steve) Jones cleaned up the landbased section with a hat trick this year – heaviest snapper, 2nd heaviest snapper and heaviest other species (2.27, 1.80, and 2kgs respectively).  Well done Snapper.  Maybe some of you boaties should give this landbased section a try next time – knock him off his rock!!

Some really good fish were also caught in the children’s section.  Dylan Cullen caught the heaviest and second heaviest snapper (4.28 and 4.04 kgs); Nathan Taylor got the heaviest kahawai (2.80 kgs) and Tyllah-Rose Rogers showed her big brothers how to do it by weighing in a nice John Dory (1.60kgs).

Brooke Davy was lucky enough to catch the average weight snapper (1.46kgs) and the mystery weights (above 1.5kgs, and below 1.5kgs) went to Ted Cliffen (2.30) and Ann Davy(1.01).

Congratulations to all participants.  It was really good to see all the familiar faces (and of course some new ones) at Anglers Lodge for our Easter competition.  Once again, a big thank you to our “inmates” for making the weekend such a resounding success.