We met at Barry dock at 6.45am for the roll call and were met
with a heavy downpour, which quickly cleared as soon as we all had
put on our waterproofs. It then remained dry for the rest of the
day, with some anglers even getting a bit of unexpected sunburn in
the afternoon.
After a quick safety briefing we boarded the Anchorman charter
boat and set off westwards, as the skipper Dave wanted to try for
smoothounds to start the day. We reached the first mark after about
45 minutes and the fishing began. Unfortunately, due to the south
westerly winds the boat was being rocked in an unusual fashion,
making even some of the regular fishermen feeling a little ill. Five
of the 10 anglers actually ended up feeding their breakfast to the
fish!!! Despite this everyone continued to fish and were rewarded
with several decent catches, amongst the usual unending stream of
dogfish!!
All was well until Mark Eddy foul hooked a common smoothound of
around 12lb, which proceeded to make good use of the strong tide and
tangled up about 5 or 6 lines at the same time!! This took about 20
minutes to sort out, ending up with some unhappy anglers!! This was
soon forgotten though and further fish continued to come aboard.
As usual Aled Daniels continued to catch throughout the day
making him favorite to win and was joined by a successful Simon
Clargo fishing next to him at the back of the boat and Mark Eddy up
the front end reeling in quite a few too. Ian Lloyd was also
catching a lot of fish but unfortunately most of his were dogfish
and not scoring very highly.
The only lady angler of the day, Ellen Fitzgerald, also made
steady progress and caught the only blonde ray of the day, as well
as several other species.
After a few hours everyone had caught something except for
newcomer Rick Heath, who was in his first qualifier. This soon
changed though as during the afternoon he caught several fish
including dogfish, spurdog, and an unexpected small tope. This
resulted in him ending up a creditable 6th place.
The skipper moved a few times during the day to try to keep us in
with the best chance of catching and by the end of the day, everyone
in the competition had caught at least one decent fish, with
everyone saying they had enjoyed the day. The species caught on the
day were dogfish, common and starry smoothounds, spurdogs; bull huss,
congers, blonde and thornback rays and tope.
At the end of the day the score sheets were scrutinized and
points added up and the results were as follows
1st - Aled Daniels - 68 points
2nd - Mark Eddy - 59 points
3rd - Simon Clargo 48 points
These 3 will go forward to the final in Poole in July to
represent the Wales region, with the first reserve being Ellen
Fitzgerald, who came 4th with 37 points.

