THIS year’s Wyvern Division Junior Open Shore Festival was fish-ed on the Mountbatten Breakwater at Plymouth.

The competition was fished between noon and 4pm and saw an entry of 48 juniors representing nine clubs plus individuals and included 12 West Bay members.

Juniors chose either to fish among the rocks for wrasse, pollack and blennies, or to float fish for garfish.

Fish were weighed and returned during the match and was fished on a best specimen basis.

After a slow start, some sizeable wrasse were weighed in but eventually the garfish started to show – this species generally proves to be one of the better to target as they return a favourable specimen rating and Danny Cowburn was the first West Bay junior to land one.

Some time after this fish was caught, excitement was heard from further down the pier and member Tiana Foot brought in a cracking gar of 1lb 1¼oz; a fish, which put her in a very strong position but over an hour of the competition still remained.

During the afternoon, it was realised that several club records for outside local waters were either open for claims or beatable on the day so new records were set by junior members Lucas Voss (aged four and who caught his first ever fish), Aaron Chambers and Serena Ousley with senior members PJ Wheeler and Craig Horton also joining in the race for records.

Species included goldsinney and corkwing wrasse, tompot blenny, shanny, rockling and pollack.

As the competition drew to a close, member Elliot Joy managed to land a final garfish which, although only half the weight of Foot’s, helped towards the two-person team event as he was her team partner; this fish was landed in the last minute of the festival.

All the competitors returned back to the car park to await results and it was announced that Foot’s fish had made it and she was declared overall winner of the festival.

Foot and Joy also won the team prize with the latter also achieving runner-up in the over-12 age group; a great result for West Bay.