|
I
take my hat off to the Oakura Surfcasting and Kayak
Club for organising and hosting The Taranaki Kayak
Classic Fishing competition and Oakura can be very
proud to be the venue for it. It was a fantastic
weekend. I popped into HQ (Butlers) at various times
over the weekend and everyone seemed to be having
fun. Thanks would have to go to the organising
committee of the Oakura Surfcasting and Kayak Club
for making this event happen and to those who put in
an enormous amount of work to ensure everyone who
entered or came along had a great time.
The
weather certainly helped. It was picture perfect
all weekend and it can be said that Mother Nature
isn’t always so co-operative. |
On
Friday night 112 contestants registered at Butlers
and got to enjoy the company of Bill Hohepa, a
fishing guru of
New Zealand
fishing and what I would call your average Kiwi
“Good Keen Bloke”. The heavily moustached and
well-weathered guest of the competition had been out
in his boat with camerawoman and wife, Linda,
getting footage for their fishing show on Cue TV.
He confessed to only catching a kahawai or two.
I
think this was a deliberate ploy by Grant Morgan not
to reveal all Taranaki’s fine fish cards on the
first date. When I caught up with Bill on Saturday
he was much more effusive about our fishing, having
caught a good bag of snapper and gurnard, or
“carrots” as he called them. |
At weigh-in on
Saturday, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the line-up of
chilly bins waiting to have their catches weighed-in and
recorded. Official records show that 1.8 tonnes of fish were
weighed in. Each contestant or team can only weigh in three
fish from each species and there were chilly bins with more in
them than that so the total haul of fish must have been much
more. The line stretched nearly all the way to the cemetery!
Grant Morgan was weigh master and when I spoke with him on
Sunday he was nursing very sore hands from wrestling 426 fish
onto the
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