OFFSHORE COMPETITIVE FISHING: Rubber duck Blindsides Everyone To Win At Guinjata!
The 23rd edition of the ‘Status Truck Sales Guinjata Bay Bonanza’ was held from 5 to 10 June this year.
After a two-year suspension due to the pandemic, offshore anglers had literally been idling their engines waiting for the go-ahead to launch. The go-ahead was given on 20 April when South Africa updated its Covid restrictions and travellers were allowed to enter the country with fewer restrictions. Mozambique soon followed suit and announced that they too were open for leisure and tourism.
Highly experienced Protea skiboat anglers and dedicated amateurs were hyped up about the news. Everyone had been waiting to test their metal against the best of the best. The Guinjata Bay Bonanza is renowned by all skiboat anglers as the unofficial ‘SA Champs’, with all the anglers knowing exactly what is at stake.
The brilliantly organised competition is not so much about the material prizes as the real win, namely ‘bragging rights’ which mean everything to an angler! When looking at the boat entries for the 2022 edition and scrolling down the historic list of winners, the favourites were clear, but Blindside, a 5,5m rubber duck with two 50hp Suzuki outboards, crewed by skipper Mike Vosloo, head angler Cameron Sim and myself, was definitely not on this list. If this was a horse race and odds were given by bookies, we would have been given odds of 500:1 against, exactly our thoughts when we discussed a name for our nameless duck, which last year simply went by ‘Rubberduck’.