I am the devils advocate!hornet wrote:I'll play the devils advocate... Look at the bright side there will be more snapper roaming around this coming season without the comp running.
You gotta admit it's a bit of a slaughter over the period the comp runs. It's not for a genuine feed in the day of a normal fisho.
Not to mention the rumours of up sizing every year.
To each his own I don't condemn anyone who likes competitions... it's just not for me.
Firstly only two fish per angler could be weighed in for the comp, even though the catch limit per angler is 10 snapper under 45 cms or 3 over 45 cms and 7 under.
The average catch rate for the comp per angler is around 1 fish per registered angler. The last year the comp was held, there were about 2,100 registered anglers and a total of 900+ fish weighed in.
So call the comp an whole sale slaughter is really stretching it. Especially when non competition anglers have been caught with catches in excess of the bag limits and some were even running a production line, making multiple trips in a day, unloading their catch at the ramp and then heading out to catch more.
In reality if you bag out on snapper, you need a very big family to eat all the snapper, a 5 kilo snapper lasts me at least a week.