WM 2004 Portugal - Grundangeln

Meeres Angel Club - Austria

40th World-Championships Boatangling

Sesimbra, Portugal, 2004.

The 40th world-championships in boatangling where hosted by Portugal in Sesimbra during the week from 16th to 23rd of October 2004.

The Austrian team consisted of Manfred Kaller, Stefan Wiche, Walter Rott, Helmut Studeny and Stephan Rott.

This year the organisation was trying to work around a storm forecasted for the first and second day of competition. As the tournament consists of one training day and 3 competition days, this storm prompted the organisers to reschedule the program for the week, and they moved the fishing forward and backwards to accommodate for the storm in the middle.

So instead of a nice relaxed arrival with an additional day of preparation before the fishing started, the first day was already busy with training and in the evening we squeezed in the official opening, which took time away from preparing for the next day with the learnings of the training.

Anyway, the storm moved in as forecasted: The first day of the competition was fished only 50% to midday as we where battling increasing windforces which built up to a gale force wind in the late afternoon. Rounding the cap to get back to port all of a sudden didn’t take 1 but more than 2 hours...

The fishing wasn’t great, but considering the condition of the southern European Oceans and the depleted fish-stocks, this was one of the better tournaments I have been to in the south of Europe. The minimum size for any fish was 18 cm, with several species having larger minimum sizes. In the end the average weight of a single fish turned out to be about 100 gram. In general one can say that in these waters it is not beneficial for winning the tournament to fish for bigger fish: There aren’t many around, and it is more important to catch a lot of fish than a few big ones...

Following a few pictures from the trip... if you would like to get more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me at sjrott@bigpond.net.au

	Anna on the nice arrival day on the terrace of the hotel
	...weather started to deteriorate on the Trainingday..
	The Austrian team from the left: Stefan Wiche, Helmut Studeny, Manfred Kaller, Walter Rott and Stephan Rott.
	Sunrise in the harbour...
	Every competitor gets the same amount and type of bait - and you are not allowed to use any extracts or enhancements on them, so that effectively everyone has the same bait on the hooks. In this case it was a bag of shrimps, calamari and pipis.
	Walter with a real knocker... ;-)
	Fredi also with an average size fish
	Stephan with a bass
	Heli with a wrasse
	Main species where different kinds of bream, wrasse and bass. Also one or the other skorpionfish has been caught.
	Official opening with flag parade...
	...and walk through the town...
	...passing all the nice little bars and watering holes for the next few days.
	And then the storm moved in...
	...and we were glad to not have to go out.
	It did wreak havoc on our plan though... our expectation of a relaxed week in the after-season 25 to 28 degree centigrade just didn't happen, and it turned out to be very stressful and hard on the body...
	After fishing, the catch was weight in at the Harbour
	The catch before being taken away to put to good use
	75 fishermen competing produce quite some fish... The winner caught over the course of 2,5 days (12,5 hours fishing) a total of 265 fish with a total weight of 25,55 kilos. The biggest fish of the tournament was a bream with 800 gram.
	The Austrian team on a day off
	From our perspective - since we sucked at fishing these waters ;-) - the greatest thing in this championships was the constant entertainment, excellent food and wine from the area, and the friendship amongst the fishing teams.
	The winning Italian team....
	and second place Slovenia.