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On Saturday August 30th, the club fished the annual cod festival leaving Carloway at 8am with nine anglers taking part. The day started off a bit grey, damp and breezy, but the southerly wind eased as the day wore on leaving just a long deep swell after the windy conditions of the last few days.
The fishing off Carloway, however, was very poor with only a few lythe, odd gurnard, mackerel, one or two dogfish; and with only two cod on board by 11.45, it was voted to head for Barvas (a journey of 45 minutes) and take a chance of better pickings there!
Upon arriving, the anglers were into fish straightaway, but not cod; instead it was a mix of haddock, coalies, gurnards and odd spurdogs, though nobody complained too much, as at least they were catching something! This was the general trend of the fishing for the rest of the day, and cod were very scarce with only another eight coming aboard before “lines up” at 3.pm.
It was disappointing to see so few cod in a competition which was dedicated to catching them, but nevertheless everybody enjoyed the day, and cod fishing can be erratic with every year being different in numbers of the species around!Last year's Cod Festival was a good example with excellent numbers of cod present on the Barvas mark.
This year’s Cod Festival champion,winning the Murdo "Timber" memorial trophy, is C.J.Buchanan with 3 cod, 18 points and 100%. In second place was Steve Phipps with 3 cod, 16 points and 88.88 points, and Ross Hall third on 2 cod, 10 points and 44.44%.
C,J and Steve shared the most number of cod prize, and Ross won the heaviest other fish prize with an excellent spurdog of 12lbs 13ozs.
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