Thursday 31st July saw the annual Junior Boat Festival match. Eleven juniors had signed up for the trip aboard the charter boat Ruby J which is owned by Keith Ferris, skippered by slim and crewed by Jeff. At one point we thought the Junior Boat Festival would have to be cancel as the forecast was not good giving the weather worsening during the afternoon, but the skipper of Ruby J decided to take the juniors out and if the weather did start to get worse he would come back early. At 1.30pm the boat set off from West Bay harbour for the trip, soon after setting off it began to rain but the wind did not pick up and the juniors were able to fish the entire match.

At 7.30pm the boat returned to West Bay with the juniors or should I say drowned rats as they were soaking wet due to the rain that fell most of the trip, but they all had big smiles on their faces and some fish in their buckets to be weighed. the juniors had really enjoyed themselves, only a few of them had been sick but this did not stop them fishing. Tom Marley who along with the crew looked after the juniors put a prize up for the first person to be sick, for a while this looked like it would be Damian Allinson-Roughton who even before the boat had set off was looking green round the gills, but he surprised us all and was not sick for the whole trip the winner of Tom's prize was Jake Dear. The winner of the competition William Grant caught a beautiful black bream of 1 kg 669 g. Any fish not destined for the pot were given to the skipper for pot bait.

1st William Grant 4 kg 578 g black bream, cuckoo wrasse, pout, poor cod & pollock.
2nd Steven Rathbone 3 kg 278 g black bream, cuckoo wrasse, pout, poor cod, bass & pollock.
3rd Damian Allinson-Roughton 2 kg 98 g cuckoo wrasse, pout & pollock.

We would like to thank the committee for funding the trip, Maureen Jackson for sponsoring the prizes, David Daw & Roy Fox for donating boat rods, The Angling Centre for supplying the bait, Tom Marley for helping the juniors and a big thanks to the owner, skipper and crew of Ruby J for all their hard work on making the day a success.

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