"It's a lot of fun, a fantastic, well organised tournament, [organisers] Anita and Mark put on a great show," he said, noting there was another impressive array of prizes including four torpedoes as the major lucky draw prizes, a host of other spot draw prizes along with chilly bins, tackle boxes, fishing gear and outdoor furniture.
Fishing was confined to 90 Mile Beach, Puheke East and Tokerau and four categories, being snapper, gurnard, kahawai and other. The nationals began last Thursday and continued until Saturday afternoon before the final prizegiving was held at The Park 90 Mile Beach Holiday Camp.
The winning team overall was Rivals (Team No41) from Auckland featuring Hayden Grant and Charlie Pou with a total of 53.465kg of fish), while runners-up were Pool Tools with 48.255kg of fish.
Spokeswoman Anita Dancaster said interest in the event had continued to grow exponentially — entries for this year's nationals only took 90 minutes to sell out and included 11 teams from Whanganui alone (up from the eight who were participating in 2017).
"We are getting more people from down bottom of the North Island," she said, before emphasising, "The event is for the locals more than anything."
With interest already going through the roof for the 2019 nationals, Dancaster said organisers were wondering if they should even promote future events as each year they were reluctantly having to turn away ever increasing numbers of prospective punters.
This year's nationals also raised $2075 for the Far North Hospice.
