2018 Fun Fish Poole
A soggy and windy day was forecast and 28 anglers boarded 4 boats while 4 anglers went to roam the shore, all to target flounder to become the 2018 fun fish Champion. The boats all headed to the same bit of shallow mud as this gave the best shelter from the prevailing wind. The reports of recent boat trips targeting flounder were not very encouraging, as a day’s fishing only produced a couple of flounder on the boat, so expectations were not great.
After about an hour a shout went up from 1 of the boats and the first flounder was caught and after another couple of hours we heard of another couple being caught but none on our boat. The only sign of marine life was the seal that surfaced behind the boat so we moved up the harbour where the skipper had 2 flounder a couple of days before. In the area we went to I have seen many flounder over the years so hopes were high of getting on the score sheet.
On a positive note the weather that was forecast was totally wrong and by afternoon there was hardly any wind and just an occasional couple of drops of rain. With about 4 hours gone the first flounder was netted on our boat, one of 35cm to Tony Sherwood, not the biggest we had heard of but at least it was the target species. With that there was a renewed effort that maybe our efforts would be rewarded. Various methods were tried with floats coming out to drift the bait along the sea bed and cover some ground, others tried 2 up or 1up 1 down and these were cast in every direction. But despite all this we were not rewarded and at lines up there was just the one flounder recorded on our boat. One thing of note we did see another seal in this area also.
When we got back to the shore the other boats had not fared much better, one other boat with just the one fish and another boat with 2. The top boat was Strongbow with 3 flounder between the 8 anglers. So it was back to the car park to see how the 4 anglers that fished the shore had done and to enter the recorded fish onto the master score sheet which would not take long. On the shore 2 anglers had managed to catch 1 flounder each, so this made a total of 9 flounder caught by 9 different anglers out of a total of 32 that fished.
In 2017 there were 39 flounder recorded. It cannot be said for sure why the reduction in flounder numbers. There are reports of commercial fishing for flounder, but one definite reason is the release into Poole harbour of 3 common seals. One of these seals was seen by anglers the week before. They were fishing from the shore and observed a seal come to the surface on 3 occasions and proceed to eat the flounders it had caught. I may be proved wrong but I believe there will be no flounder in Poole harbour next winter so we need to go elsewhere for the 2019 AGM and fun fish or fish for another species at Poole.
The presentation took place in the car park as is usual for this event. As there were 9 anglers on 1 fish each it was down to length to obtain the winner. 9th place being a fish of 34cm the rest were all close and in 3rd place was Matt Osborne with one of 42cm, runner up Martin Bobbett with a fish of 43cm and in first place with a fish of 47cm was Vernon Allen. So this meant besides Vernon winning overall, he also took the trophy for longest flounder and as he fished from the shore the trophy for top shore angler, so plenty of glass ware to adorn his trophy cabinet.
OVERALL RESULTS
1st Vernon Allen 47cm shore caught
2nd Martin Bobbett 43cm
3rd Matt Osborne 42cm
4th Reg Clough 40cm shore caught
5th Pete Bailey 38cm
6th= Ash Courier 37cm
6th= Pete Neale 37cm
8th Tony Sherwood 35cm
9th Richard Russell 34cm
