Saturday 3rd July 2010 saw the fourth Paddle Round the Pier charity fishing open held at Brighton Marina, East Sussex. A friendly, family oriented fishing event, this is just one small part of Europe’s largest free beach festival, Paddle Round the Pier. The Paddle was created in 1996 by Sussex surfers to raise money for charity.
Fishing open creator and organiser Sean Clark said “As a surfer and sea angler I felt that sea anglers are an important part of the beach community. So I created this fishing open as part of the main paddle event to include all anglers. I managed to talk my friend and trophy designer Mike Shorer into creating the stunning silver trophy and asked local and national angling industry to donate a few prizes to the prize fund. So far each year we have been able to give away an amazing fishing kayak and thousands of pounds worth of fishing prizes. I had to work much harder than ever to obtain a prize collection this year but the local tackle shops and angling friends provide superb support and thanks must go to them all.”
Sean explains..“I deliberately set this event up so that everyone from children to hardened match anglers have a chance of winning prizes.” To do this Sean decided to change the way traditional matches work. “In the paddle fishing competition we only hand over the trophy for a year to the winning angler. The winners name gets inscribed onto the trophy for posterity then returns for the following year’s competition. No cash prizes are available. All of the prizes are won in the raffle and this is how the money is raised for the charities. “
The competitors pay £10 entry to the competition and get a raffle ticket in return. For every additional £5 raised they get another raffle ticket. All raffle tickets are drawn on the day before the start of the competition and prizes given immediately. Sean says “We have found the serious anglers now battle quite hard for the trophy while maintaining an extremely fun, friendly and relaxed fishing competition.”
This year’s top raffle prize donated by Pelican fishing kayaks was an amazing fully rigged Pelican Castaway 130 sit on top kayak and was won by Alan Stewart from Epsom.
With clear sunny skies and lumpy seas, twenty one anglers competed with the youngest being seven year old Paige Harvey. A staggering £880 was raised in sponsorship. Brighton Marina take £60 in peg fees leaving £820 to be added to the main paddle charity pot.
In true paddle style, the event was relaxed and friendly with some good natured banter. Fish caught were wrasse, polluck, pout, macks, garfish, bass, sole and gurnard. So species points were making a difference in the results and ensured a very lively and exciting last few hours of fishing.
First Place went to Ally Harvey (406pts) who battled hard in the last few hours to catch up with local marina expert Sam Sampson (381pts) in second place. Third place to George Cunningham from Tronix sea fishing tackle who has very generously sponsored the fishing competition every year.
Tronix also sponsored a best junior prize which went to fifteen year old Richard (132pts). Richard returns next year in the seniors. Closely on his heels was the talented seven year old Paige Harvey who had 132 points. It always good to see the juniors doing so well. It’s worth noting that these juniors beat the majority of the adult entrants.
This year’s Paddle Round the Pier event, organized and ran entirely by unpaid volunteers, as a whole raised a staggering £36,000 which will be split equally between the RNLI, Surfaid International and children’s charity Whoopsadaisy
For more information visit www.paddleroundthepier.com
Ally Harvey
