Fishing Victoria Forum

hornet wrote:I'll play the devils advocate... Look at the bright side there will be more snapper roaming around this coming season without the comp running.
You gotta admit it's a bit of a slaughter over the period the comp runs. It's not for a genuine feed in the day of a normal fisho.
Not to mention the rumours of up sizing every year.
To each his own I don't condemn anyone who likes competitions... it's just not for me.

I am the devils advocate!

Firstly only two fish per angler could be weighed in for the comp, even though the catch limit per angler is 10 snapper under 45 cms or 3 over 45 cms and 7 under.

The average catch rate for the comp per angler is around 1 fish per registered angler. The last year the comp was held, there were about 2,100 registered anglers and a total of 900+ fish weighed in.

So call the comp an whole sale slaughter is really stretching it. Especially when non competition anglers have been caught with catches in excess of the bag limits and some were even running a production line, making multiple trips in a day, unloading their catch at the ramp and then heading out to catch more.

In reality if you bag out on snapper, you need a very big family to eat all the snapper, a 5 kilo snapper lasts me at least a week.

I enjoyed the comp when I did it, and as Wolly said, it was far from a slaughter, the only thing that was a PITA, was the idiots that would come up and anchor right on you, cause you were pulling in a fish as they went past :down: that’s a great time to test the distance capabilities of the deck wash though :a_goodjob:

Lol haha

PJ72 wrote:I actually sent them a message through their website about 2months ago, asking about membership and if I could come to a meeting (to see what the general atmosphere of the club was like), no response to date, so not going to bother, obviously don’t want new members

Might be why they couldn't find enough people to run the comp.

Its just like everything these days slowly fading away

Pretty sure this was a know fact last year. Not a great shock. To be honest it doesnt concern me. No more fish floating down past my boat because they caught 1 bigger..
Each to their own.

Wolly Bugger wrote:

hornet wrote:I'll play the devils advocate... Look at the bright side there will be more snapper roaming around this coming season without the comp running.
You gotta admit it's a bit of a slaughter over the period the comp runs. It's not for a genuine feed in the day of a normal fisho.
Not to mention the rumours of up sizing every year.
To each his own I don't condemn anyone who likes competitions... it's just not for me.

I am the devils advocate!

Firstly only two fish per angler could be weighed in for the comp, even though the catch limit per angler is 10 snapper under 45 cms or 3 over 45 cms and 7 under.

The average catch rate for the comp per angler is around 1 fish per registered angler. The last year the comp was held, there were about 2,100 registered anglers and a total of 900+ fish weighed in.

So call the comp an whole sale slaughter is really stretching it. Especially when non competition anglers have been caught with catches in excess of the bag limits and some were even running a production line, making multiple trips in a day, unloading their catch at the ramp and then heading out to catch more.

In reality if you bag out on snapper, you need a very big family to eat all the snapper, a 5 kilo snapper lasts me at least a week.

Actually, irrespective of weather come comp weekend most entrants head out. 50 boats head out at Patto in 30 knot westerlies at 3pm every Friday arvo? Or over 100 trying to launch at Hastings at the same time? (Don't say it doesn't happen, because I still remember the last big blow a few years ago at Hastings watching every man and his dog crashing anchors through screens, jamming skegs into the ramps etc. all to catch a fish for the comp) And come weigh in close on the Saturday the fish numbers aren't all that different to any other year with much better weather. Any regular cup weekend with utter garbage weather sees those fish still swimming

Wolly Bugger wrote:

hornet wrote:I'll play the devils advocate... Look at the bright side there will be more snapper roaming around this coming season without the comp running.
You gotta admit it's a bit of a slaughter over the period the comp runs. It's not for a genuine feed in the day of a normal fisho.
Not to mention the rumours of up sizing every year.
To each his own I don't condemn anyone who likes competitions... it's just not for me.

I am the devils advocate!

Firstly only two fish per angler could be weighed in for the comp, even though the catch limit per angler is 10 snapper under 45 cms or 3 over 45 cms and 7 under.

The average catch rate for the comp per angler is around 1 fish per registered angler. The last year the comp was held, there were about 2,100 registered anglers and a total of 900+ fish weighed in.

So call the comp an whole sale slaughter is really stretching it. Especially when non competition anglers have been caught with catches in excess of the bag limits and some were even running a production line, making multiple trips in a day, unloading their catch at the ramp and then heading out to catch more.

In reality if you bag out on snapper, you need a very big family to eat all the snapper, a 5 kilo snapper lasts me at least a week.

Surely not all 2100 entrants weigh there fish for various reasons like believing they wont be close to winning, laziness or whatever.. also I highly doubt every person who gets onto a good patch just keeps 2 for weigh in, pulls up anchor and heads off home. As always, the common angler will be targeting for close to a bag, no different for the tea tree.

Head in the sand if you only think 900 were caught the entire comp weekend.

From my understanding in the later years the major prizes were for random weight captures not the biggest Snapper. Nothing to gain from upsizing in respect to prizes the only thing would be glory if you wanted to catch the winning biggest weight and get your name on the honour board.

As long as anglers kept their bag limit without upsizing theres no issue to me. The snapper population seems to be going ok.

ive had this discussion before on another thread. but..

when a fish is upgraded the old one is already dead most times, so if you upgrade past your 4 fish then they have to be thrown out or you risk being fined.
snapper boats dont have livewells like bream boats, so fish will be dead most of the time.
how many boats would have upgraded before actually going to the weigh in??? so saying only XXX amount of fish was weighed in means jackschit when quite a few would already be floating..