2017 HIREPOOL TRAILER BOAT TOURNAMENT REPORT
The build-up to this year’s event was fantastic with plenty of promotion over the airways, posters everywhere and our team of flyer droppers working hard to cover the bustling boat ramps on both sides of the harbour. Certainly the boat ramps from Boxing Day on are something to behold with any given sunny day seeing the ramp traffic swelling to 300 plus trailers just at the Sulphur Point ramp. We sure do like our fishing over this period and this is why the timing of the Trailer Boat tournament is spot on!
Weather is always a factor and this year we were blessed (unlike last year!) with a fishable forecast that over delivered with mostly clear skies and light winds. Our weather for the entire event pretty well bucked the strong westerly trend that has defined the start of summer, so it was nice to get lucky this time.
By the end of briefing we had 110 anglers signed up, this being well up on last year, and not surprising we caught more fish! With a good showing of solid albacore to 12kg, and we had some quality entries in the wreck fish and measure and release Snapper and Kingfish categories see fish caught in all categories, just not Billfish! See the results…RESULTS – Trailer Boat 2017
This year the Club was privileged to have not only Scott Parry from the TV show Fishing & Adventure on board but also all of the shows sponsors! The shows Surtees aptly named ‘Holy Ship’ was also to fish the event kindly taking Stu from Okuma and Jack from Hirepool with the lads fishing hard and doing particularly well on the snapper and finding a patch of trevally that for whatever reason were tough to catch this weekend anywhere else.
With the ‘random access’ rule in place the trailer boats were welcome to venture throughout chart54. Some of the teams choose the more northern waters of the Aldermans, and a couple of boats shot through to White Island and over-nighted. Miss B Haven was the only boat to come close to threatening the marlin prizes after playing a billfish for 20mins only to have the hooks pull! Bugger! Other than this the pelagic offshore action was restricted to Albacore and a few skipjack that have yet to arrive.
Brian Grey on Robot had a spectacular first day pulling a couple of puka and a nice measure and release kingie that took out two first places in these sections and did it solo! The Wally of the Weekend was contested by a couple of good yarns but taken out by our own Club Captain managing to hit a shark at 25knots on the way home…this did nothing for the health of the outboard.
It was awesome to see the dozen junior’s anglers fishing hard and catching some nice fish, with Josh Leigh off ‘Wind Her UP’ pipping the rest of the field with a lovely 9.44kg Albacore Tuna. The Raymarine Hero Shot was hotly contested with Helen Eynon off Elevar receiving the Dragonfly sounder, a great pic and a deserving winner as judged by Scott from Fishing & Adventure…I reckon the F&A singlet helped her out!
Anyway, thanks to everyone that came and fished this year’s event, we were thrilled with the fact that everyone had such a good time and look forward to delivering a bigger and better event for 2018!
CHECK OUT SOME OF THE PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT!