Good Rooster nets eight big ones

A good gameplan and 500 litres of fuel is what helped Greg Bennett and his team to victory in one of the highlights on their fishing calendar.

More than 200 competitors on 64 boats hit the water for the first weekend of July to take part in the annual D’Urville Island Winter Fishing Competition.

Greg, his daughter Zoe and his two best mates Roger and Wayne (Wiff) were the team of four that managed to claim the top prize after landing all eight of the required species – snapper, kahawai, kingfish, gurnard, groper, trevally, blue cod and tarakahi.

They were one of only four boats to pull in all eight species, with one vessel, Rig Pig, managing to land nine species.

Greg’s boat Good Rooster, an 8m alloy, weighed in a whopping 169.03lb of fish which was enough to get their name etched onto the coveted trophy and take home bragging rights.

Cathy George and Craig Tatnell, owners of D’Urville Island Resort at Catherine Cove, have run the competition for the last five years, with Greg and the team entering each year, but not quite managing to take home top prize.

“We missed out last year, we didn’t manage to get a kahawai, so this year we had a really good game plan.”

The plan involved Zoe driving to French Pass loaded with a spare 500 litres of fuel, with the boys launching at Havelock and trying their hand at their gurnard spot on the way through to pick up Zoe.

“It paid off, after landing a gurnard we shot across to D’Urville to our regular snapper spot, on the second drift Roger pulled up a snapper. I then fluked a trevally and Roger landed a blue cod, so we had four species on board by about 10.30am,” Greg says.

Another successful day’s fishing on Friday, which saw Zoe land a 22.62lb hapuka winning her the women’s title, saw the boat land the eighth species needed to secure their shot at the trophy.

“We went out on Saturday morning to see if we could get any bigger fish but it was a terrible day, we hardly caught anything.”

But what they had already weighed in was enough to secure their name on the trophy.

Greg says the bar tab got a “bit of a wind-up”, with a great night had by all.

For the first time, Cathy and Craig organised a live band, which they say was a great success and something they will look to do again next year.

“It’s not only a competition, it’s more about growing the sport of fishing,” Cathy says.

Greg says he, and the team, will be back for another attempt next year.