The inaugural Able Finance Services Girls Gone Fishin competiton was held at Dundee Beach from 28th – 30th May 2015.

The competition saw 29 teams, or 91 keen female anglers, take to the water to chase the elusive Barramundi. 25 of the teams chose to take a male skipper on board, whilst the other 4 teams took the helm of the boat themselves.

The girls fished hard over the two days, landing 129 point scoring Barra, the biggest being a beautiful girl at 110cm.

On Thusday 28th May 2015 at The Lodge of Dundee, our anglers and skippers were treated to the Great Northern Breweries welcome drinks and information evening. On the night, our teams all received their welcome packs, which held their merchandise, competition rules and scoring information. The atmosphere that was present on the welcome night was a great sign of what was to come over the weekend.

Day 1

After a great welcome night the girls were up bright and early (with the exception of one or two teams who had caught welcome night fever). The Lodge kindly organized for their tractors to start bright and early at 5:30 am, which ensured the majority of the teams were on the water in time for lines in at 7am.

As the day went on, there were whispers on the river about who was catching what and how big it was! Teams had filled the Finnis River and Little Finnis River and were fishing hard.

It was looking like a pretty close competition until about 2pm, when there were whoops of joy being heard along the Little Finnis…. Lou-Anne Duncan from team Barra Slayers had landed a whopping 110cm Barra! What made this even more exciting, was the fact that Louie had just caught her first metre plus Barra, and what a beauty at 110cm it was.

The teams continued to fish hard, and called it a day at 5pm, when the rules called for lines in.

At dinner on Day 1, Louie got up with her team to tell us all about how she had caught her metrey, in Louies words ‘it was a bit boring with no action, so I racked the rod, had a sip of soda water, burp and a fart and then my line went zzzz, zzzz, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz! The excitement in the air was palpable.

Day 1 was a successful day all round, with 50 fish being caught!

Day 2

Again the teams were up bright and early and launched at the boat ramp from 5:30am, the girls were keen to see what the day would bring.

After having a quick chat with the boys from ABC Tales from the tinny, we were off to join them with Sally, our representative from Able Finance Services on board to see just what being a marshal was about.

We arrived at the Little Finnis to be greeted by a number of teams keen to see if they could match, or even out-do the donkey caught on day 1. After doing a trawl up and down the river and having a chat to a few of the teams we headed to the Finnis River to see what was happening there.

We were greeted at the mouth by Chix With Stix, who asked us if we wanted to know a secret! They proceeded to let us know that Carli Carey had just landed a 99cm, and Rebecca Wigg had landed an 86cm, PB’s for the both of them. We were so happy to hear that day 2 was looking to be just as successful as day 1.

We trawled further up the river to be greeted by our awesome marshals Andy and Gregg, who had volunteered their time to come out to help us, and had also suggested that we do a sausage sizzle on the water each day! What a HUGE success that was! The girls all raved about how good it was to stop in and have a chat with the boys, and grab a bite to eat at the same time.

After our little pit stop, we scooted up the river to the second rock bar where we met a couple of other teams who had caught some decent fish, biggest being an 87 cm, also a PB for Sophie, who had caught her first ever Barra the day before! How good is that! Teams returned to The Lodge after lines out at 4pm and got ready for the presentation evening.

Having kept an eye on the BOM website to make sure the rain wasn’t going to affect our proceedings, all the prizes were laid out and dinner was served. Halfway through dinner, the rain started, just a light shower though, so we put some of the more delicate prizes away thinking it would pass….. it didn’t, it continued to rain intermittently for the rest of the night.

We rushed through the presentations which saw the following teams and anglers presented with their prizes:

We quickly wrapped up proceedings and got under cover.

For our first year, we could not have been happier with how the competition went and the support we received from our sponsors and competitors alike, albeit there were a couple of mishaps on the water, but the atmosphere that was present over the two days / three nights was everything we had hoped it would be. As one of our skippers said “you have provided the best fishing comp going with exact balance of serious fun and not too much pressure on winning” which is exactly how we wanted it to be.

For now, we say thank you to our sponsors, competitors, skippers, marshals and friends who came to support and help us over the weekend. It is time to relax for a little bit and then get back into organizing 2016, which won’t be bigger, only better.

Here are some statistics from our first year.

- 29 Teams

- 91 Anglers

- 25 Skippers

- 50 point scoring Barra on Day 1

- 79 point scoring Barra on Day 2

- 129 Barra caught in total!

- 192 sausages cooked and eaten on the river

- Biggest Barra 110cm

- Smallest Barra 27cm

- Score for fun and atmosphere 10/10

Until next year,