Some people still kill the bigger ones.MadMike wrote:That's Joe Dennehys format for his soft bait champs comp. People still kill the bigger fish they catch in those as well as what they weigh. It also still kills fish and normally the weigh is for more than 1 of each species.
Last year, I put back one snapper that was well into the 80s and 2 in the 70s; this year, Nick and Rick in Team Obsolete put back one each in the high 80s/low 90s. We specifically went targeting snapper, though on the second day Nick went targeting trevally so as to win the trevally section.
I am here to tell you that catching 4 snapper as close as possible to 60cm on each of two succeeding days is not an easy task, not nearly as easy as going for one big snapper. So it's a lot more fun.
This "4 as close to 60 as possible" is actually close to what I would normally kill in a morning's fishing anyway ("home" rules are >38cm and <65cm, and I'd usually bring home only 3,4, or 5 fish).
Joe's comp is still a fish-killing comp, but I have no idea how you'd instal a livewell big enough on kayaks to do otherwise.
I do take the point that often it's the most skilful anglers - eg Pete and Ails, Rob, Stephen - that feature in the "one big fish takes all" comps, but in my observation, for snapper anyway, in the open comps of this sort the absolute top prize is more often than not taken by a lucky angler (eg Beach and Boat, repeatedly).