European Line Class and Boat Championships
Cobh, County Cork, Ireland, 200
On the 17th August the opening ceremony to the 2008 Line and Boat Championships took place, all be it a shorter than planned parade due to the, as was described by the compare, “soft weather”, to translate to English; it was pouring with rain and blowing a gale!
Unfortunately this weather continued on the first day of the Line Class Championship, so it was fished in the large Cork harbour at anchor. The harbour produced mainly Dogfish, small Whiting and Pollack, Gurnard and the occasional Ray. Though not caught on that day, the Irish Blonde Ray record was caught in this Harbour. Many of the boats had 10 Anglers on with the 5 on each side only fishing against the other 4 on that side for a Boat win, so with 170 Anglers taking part this gave 32 day winners.
On day two of the Line Class event the weather had improved to occasional rain with lighter winds so the boats were able to go out to the west to drift fish as programmed. This saw an improvement in fishing for most of the boats with a better size of fish caught. Being on the drift the target fish were Pollack, Whiting, Wrasse and Gurnard with a couple of Cod. Dogfish were caught when the tide slackened when the boats were almost stationery.
When the scores over the 2 days were totalled this left 11 on 200% with our very own Jim Pressley coming out on top and taking the Gold Pin.
The next 3 days for the European Boat Championship the weather settled with only the occasional shower, well this is Ireland ! Fishing was all done on the anchor, so besides the previous species Conger formed a large amount of everyone’s score. Ling were about in 2 sizes, 6 to 8 lb fish and for those that were lucky enough there were ling of about 10 oz which fell to the smaller baits meant for Wrasse and Dogfish, but as they measured around 300mm they were over the 250mm minimum size for fish to count so scored the same points as there bigger relations. Also on the boat I was on, on day 3 we saw 3 Bull Huss After day 1 there were 32 on 100%, by the end of the second day there were 15 double boat winners, which after the final day left 3 on 300% which after count back left Heiko Dreier as the Gold Pin winner for an unprecedented 3 wins in a row.
Hard luck story goes to Ray Barron who over the 5 days only dropped 2% on day 3 to leave him in 4 th place on 298%. He also on the last day out fished a local competitor who had a commanding lead the first 2 days and had it not been for the Barron lesson would have won overall instead of finishing 21 st , such is the draw of life and boats
Also worth a mention, your Secretary and author of this took the prize for Most Fish over the competition.
I also had the biggest Cod of 6lb until Mike Smith came in on Thursday with one of 11.28 lb. With this Mike took the prize for Biggest Cod.
Arthur White had the Best Specimen, a L.S.D of 3.21lb for 99%
In the National Section Teams category the Italians repeated their winning run of the last 2 years. The home team of Ireland were held off to 3 rd place by the England team of Ray Barron (manager) Helen Verrall , Kim Bowden, Ken Smith and Mike Smith , taking Silver.
There was the presentation of awards on Saturday afternoon followed by a fine Gala Dinner and closing speeches in the evening. The organisation of the competition was a credit to the Irish Section, it was a well-run competition with excellent boats and Skippers and I think we all had a good time in Cobh.
Individual results Line
1st Jim Pressley
7th Ray Barron
11th Richard Russell
13th Mike Smith
19th Ken Smith
28th Helen Verrall
31st Andrew Smith
51st Jim Phillipson
56th Dave Clark
65th Graham Latimer
94th Kim Bowden
105th John O’Leary
116th Matt Osborne
Individual results Boat
4th Ray Barron
7th Kim Bowden
19th Mike Smith
23rd Ken Smith
41st Richard Russell
65th John O’Leary
78th Arthur White
92nd Jim Pressley
93rd Helen Verrall
98th Dave Clark
104th Andrew Smith
108th Matt Osborne
140th Graham Latimer
167th Jim Phillipson
Report by Kim Bowden