On Sunday we held the first round of the Surf Coast Cup. Initial plans were to head out at Anglesea but overnight rains and having the river dumping all the water right where we wanted to go we decided to move down the road to Aireys Inlet. Upon arrival the winds were calm and the ocean even calmer, presenting an absolute glassy vista.
To make things interesting this was going to be a polespear only competition. Many of us hadn’t touched a polespear since we upgraded to our first spearguns years ago. So prior to the timer starting there was much wondering around checking out each others poles which ranged from exotic blue water poles with slip tips to the good ol’ fibreglass 2 piece with pranger head.
With the official comp clock started we all headed down to the water, Danny and Pete heading towards the Marine park side and the rest of us going east around the corner before getting into the water.
In the shallows the viz was around 5m which didn’t bother us as we started coming to terms with how to use a polespear again. There were plenty of fish about but soon became very wary of divers and their spears, so it was time to head out further into deeper waters. The top 1-2 meters was a bit hazy due to the rain the night before but dip below that and you had 10m+ viz!
Some great fish were taken with the pole but some better ones came out just to tease us, I’m talking about snapper and some thumping KGW, oh to have had a gun (or more ability with the polespear)!
Competitors came back to shore in dribs and drabs with most people back with an hour or more to spare which put the pressure on me to get the BBQ fired up seeing the hungry divers on shore waiting for me but Russell took nearly the whole 6 hour time limit and it worked for him coming in as the winner with just 2 species.
One of the aims we had with the SCC score sheet and rules was to limit the number of fish weighed in to just 5 and to go with a scoresheet based of weight and a multiplier with harder and more tasty fish being rewarded more and the winner of the comp reflects this. Yes we are competitive but we also don’t want to spear more than what we want on the table.
All in all this was a great day out, an interesting event (but I am looking forward to using my gun next time!) and a cracking start to the inaugural Surf Coast Cup!
Results
1st Russell 100 points
2nd Gerard 99.73 points
3rd Danny 91.77 points
4th Hayden 88.66 points
5th Nam 64.44 points
6th Angus 59.36 points
7th Jake 53.98 points
8th Peter 19.56 points
9th Luke 16.11 points
