Whitby Sea Anglers Association Open victory for Guisborough's Brad Chapman
Sunday saw Whitby Sea Anglers host their annual Open match as 95 seniors and five juniors competing for a £750 first place prize.
This prize was jointly sponsored by Wilf Nobles Plant Hire & Construction £500, and £250 Mariner A, writes Peter Horbury.
Conditions were favourable for the match, fishing from 10am to 4pm, with the weigh-in and match presentation held at Whitby Rifle Club.
However the Northerly sea state, 8-10ft, was growing making some marks unfishable requiring a move mid match. Plenty of colour in the water, bright clear skies but a chilly WNWesterly wind gusting 22mph.
Low water at 10.36hrs, Whitby, the flood was nearly an hour late to take hold, but once flooding its progress was fast pushed-on by the wind.
Chairman William Atkinson, and Rich Deadman methodically ‘scored’ the fish and weighed the fish, all 177 of them - 172 codlings, two bleggs, one bass, a billet and one flat fish.
Of the 100 rods, 54 weighed-in 506lb 7oz, giving an average of 2lb 15oz/fish.
The only junior to weigh-in Rhys Carr won £50, 53rd overall.
The Heaviest Flat Fish was 14½ oz, winning £25 for local angler Damion Townsend.
The Superpool, sponsored £5 per match entry was boosted by £150 from Mariner A, giving a £624 prize pot split two/thirds and one/third for the two Heaviest Fish, Phil France, Scarborough, had a fine spragg of 10lb 6oz for Heaviest Fish, and local angler Mike Vasey was runner-up with another spragg of 8lb.
The overall winner of the 45th annual Open was Guisborough angler Brad Chapman collecting the £750 jackpot. In second place was Scarborough’s Sean Crowe collected £200 with Mark Thomas, Scarborough, collecting £100 for third place.
Long distance northerly swell just didn’t materialise for Wednesday evening’s three-hour Whitby Sea Anglers Association League match.
Water was crystal clear, and sea state NWesterly swell 1ft at best. Yet another scratching match for 12 members and a junior.
It was a good job there was heavy cloud cover [and light drizzle, not so] to mask the near full Beaver moon [full on 15th]. The WNWesterly winds grew in strength throughout the match 15mph.
At the scales Jason Ebison, Whitby, surprised everyone with the Heaviest Fish, a 4 lb 14½ oz pollock, one blegg, and three rocklings, giving him Heaviest Bag of Fish 7lb.
In order to be competitive, a 5lb match average weigh-in is required.
Leading angler Brian Harland is negative 9lb, which shows how poor the start to the season has been.
By Match 13 last season the weigh-in was 447 fish for 760lb, with the top rod 48lb ahead of the target 65lb.
In the Singles Knockouts final Colin Stainthorpe beat Dave Perrett by 1 oz, the latter said: “I would have tried harder if I had remembered it was the final!”