Day of the Bumper Bream
It was a good looking day as the boats gathered in the bay below the historic fishermen’s hut at Long Reef. The fifteen odd boats and nearly fifty divers signed on listened to the safety talk, and waited impatiently for the start. North Shore meant business with a roll up of twenty six divers! After the roll call the divers went to their respective boats and motored out a few hundred yards off shore where the flag start was done from big Maccas boat and boats raced north and south to their dive spots.
The conditions were good, although there was a building southerly swell and the water was cold and even colder on the bottom, the divers dived hard working towards the weigh in at 1:15pm.
At the weigh in there was a lot of inspecting of other diver’s tubs the weighing and scoring started. The fish that came in were still of what you would expect to get in winter. Bream, luderick, some horse silver drummer but hardly any pelagics were taken. As the weighing continued some nice fish came through with Brett Whalan (NS) with a good 2.26kg dusky flathead and a near 7kg silver drummer, Scott Macca (MW) a 1.020kg bream & a 1.275kg goatfish, Phil Sheppard (NS) a 7.4kg silver drummer and Titovan Roncin (SSD) with nearly a kilo of tarwhine.
But for the hotly contested most meritorious fish of the day award sponsored by Adreno invariably were won by bream. The junior MMF went to North Shores Joe Halkyard with a beautiful bream of 1.230kg(98pts) from Jarod McKenzie’s 86pt bream. The senior MMF was a tie of two bream both worth 92pts between me and Phil Sheppard but on count back lucky Phil got it with his bream going 1.165kg and mine 1.150kg, curse you Phil!
The winner of the day was San Souci’s Titovan Roncin, a first time Alliman winner with a score of 610pts, a great score considering the conditions on the day, coming second was Jarod McKenzie (MW) with 531pts who has out shone his dad on the day and fast becoming one of the best Alliman divers for his age. North Shore took out the day from Sans Souci which gives them a point lead going into the next Alliman round at Kurnell on Sunday 9th October 2016 (2nd weekend of the month due to the first being a long weekend).
Kurnell will be a good competition so if you haven’t dived for a while in an Alliman come along and support your Club and enjoy the day.
If you want to find out more about the Alliman Shield please contact Lee on 0413 033 224 or [email protected]
Dive safe
Lee Dalli
President
Metropolitan Spearfishing Zone