The 1st ever Bali Sport Fishing Tournament . Hello Surfers come Fishermen and thanks for checking out this section of the baliwaves.com ! Well here we are in December and every year at this time as tourism fades out of the equation we start to concentrate on tageting pelagic’s around the scenic coastline of Bali. We do this for two main reasons with the first and most important being the need for income and food. Secondly as every fisherman know’s it’s the best way to forget about the state of affairs in this crazy world. You see there’s no politic’s or religion to fight and argue about when your out fishing, it’s pure fishing time. Well there’s quite a lot of local Balinese that come from long lines of traditional fishing families that go way back before the influence of tourism appeared in Bali, and that’s what they still continue to do to this day and hopefully will for many generations to come. The only question in doubt is the ever increasing development of the precious beach front by the rich restauranters and villa mobs, that are always squeezing the traditional fishermen out of their rightful beach access (I don’t know how many times I’ve personally seen this sad thing take place). So please remember the next time your here in beautiful Bali sitting in a beach front restaurant or cafe or kicking back in a luxury filled beach front villa that it was once a place were Balinese fishing families lived in harmony with the ocean.
Anyway with that bit of backgroud laid down the local sport fishermen from Kuta down to the Airport got together and decided to have a trolling contest to help keep us all together as a group, and to have some fun as a group. My good friend Gede Ondel was the brain child of the event and with only 4 days notice put it all together. Due to the short notice we only managed 25 boats (traditional fishing boats carved out of a solid tree with the aid of two bamboo “outriggers” to help stabilize) to enter the event. At the end of the day there wasn’t a hell of a lot of fish caught but there were a few quality sized Spanish Mackeral and Barracuda weighed in. The competition was tight and pretty close based on a point system regarding species boated. At the end of the event all fish were BBQ’d and the Bintang beer flowed. There were no complaints or sour grape comments just laughter and good vibes all round. Old Slim even managed to finish the event in 7th place and that really made the fish taste sweeter and the beer even better. Especially when I was the only white boy lucky enough to be involved in the event.
We are planning to run more of these competitions in the near future, that’s a certainty. With a major event scheduled in for June that will have fishermen from all over Indonesia invited along with any other international surfer/fisho’s wanting to come along and participate in what’s shaping up to be a collosal type day here in Bali. I’ll just finish up this report by talking you through some of the photos I’ve loaded up (courtesy of MADE SWITRA) Photo No.3 is Gede Ondel the event organiser. Photo No.4 the event winner Made Arme. Photo No.5 is of 1st 2nd and 3rd place getters with their catch. Photo No.6 is Netis who was good enough to lend Slim his old boat so I could compete. Photo No.7 shows how we get our boats in and out of the water. And to finish up Photo No.10 speaks for it’s self.
What a day, it was historic for me and will live on in my memory until the very end and even longer here on the baliwaves.com. Cause hey, what else have aging surfers got to do besides GO FISHING !!!
Best Regards from Bali
Slim
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