Yamaha Great Inland Fishing Festival Wrap Up

[peterr]

Our festival weekend didn't get off to a real good start with a wild storm hitting the dam on the friday night that wiped out all the brave souls camping on the waters edge. Didn't deter all the fisher people though with a record 457 entries for the weekend.
Due to the big fresh in the dam the catfish were prolific, with 409 measured & released over the 3 days. Yellowbelly were next with 187 measured, then Mr Murray Cod with only 12 measured.
Overall Champion was Shirley Lockwood from Emmaville, who took home $1200.00 for her efforts.
Best Cod for the weekend measured 106cms.
Best Yellowbelly was 64cms.
Best Catfish was 59.5 cms.
We had fisher people from Portland Victoria, Bathurst, Scone, Musswellbrook, Coffs Harbour, Lightning Ridge, Tamworth, Moree, Taree and the Travelling Fisherman even made an appearance.
There was a good crowd at the presentation & raffle draw to finish off a great weekend.
Overall the change to catch & release went over very well with everybody as this is the big change for the future of our comps.
Hopefully next year will be bigger & better.
Peterr.

[McCod]

Not a bad result considering the weather.... Was there many Redfin caught ? I'm guessing there was not a class for them.
Good to see it is now a catch & Release comp ....

Cheers Les

[scott_b]

Gday
608 fish caught , 457 fishing 1.33 fish each . 409 catty , not much fun for the lure fisher's. I bumped the average fish per people up with my zero score.
wamjam

[peterr]

I heard of one Redfin for the weekend, they seem to have dissapeared.Some people say disease, I say Cod lollies.
Lack of these fish meant no class this year.

Wamjam
You must have been tossing those lures in the wrong spots. Most of the larger Yellas & Cod were spun up. Young bloke that got the106 cod was using a purple spinnerbait, an 80 cm on saturday fell to a home made huge green & black deep diver. Not many fish caught trolling. I think it was the big change that came through that put the fish off resulting in a lot of people , including me, not catching a lot of fish.

[scott_b]

Gday peterr
mate I think I throw a lure or spinner bait at just about every rock ,tree ,log and lizzard.
thats fishen wamjam

[peterr]

Yep, you ,me & and a lot of other people too. Still I got to spend a bit of quality time with my young bloke, so that always makes up for quiet fishing time.
Where are you from Wamjam?.

[bdowdy]

interesting about the redfin as i was talking to a bloke at glenn innes and he also said that the redfin had gone from a disease even arond the glen area , has anyone any idea on the subject as it seems strange as last time i fished copeton there were at least 20 small redfin chasing my lure and it was common to catch 2 on 1 lure.( great eating also) bdowdy

[peterr]

Yeah, would be interesting to hear of other comments. I remember coming across schools of them a few years ago & there would be 6 or 8 of them trying to jump on a lure that already had a fish on it. Now you very rarely see them.
Cheers Pete.

[scott_b]

Gday
# # Think it was 6 years ago we camped at Copeton at christmas and there was thousands of dead small redfin all around the banks ,don't know if they ever recovered. I remember catching bigger ones on bait at the same time.
Iv'e throwen lures for days and days and haven't seem one for a long time.
Heres an old scanned pic of the last reddy I could find , bit sad still using mono and the old ABU looks brand new.
wamjam

[McCod]

Last fished Copeton in Nov 02 and the Redfin were easy pickings then...
Sometimes you could see Schools of them in the hundreds up near the surface...... Just cast a small or med sized lure at them and they were all over it.... best was aprox 40 cm but most were around 20 cm or less.

# Cheers Les