Shetland Viking Festival 2009

by David Proudfoot

The Viking Festival was fished over three days last week with fifty seven anglers putting to sea in nineteen boats. The competition was fished on a boat winner percentage basis and the heaviest bag decides who was awarded the maximum one hundred percent on each boat.

Thursday saw a fresh southerly gusting up to 40 knots which disrupted the fishing and mean that boats were drifting at speeds of over two 2 knots during some of the day. The massive swell that was kicked up resulted in more than one breakfast being consigned to the depths.

Day one winner was a local angler Raymond Laurenson with 89lbs and three other anglers landed over 80lbs despite the atrocious conditions. The biggest fish was 12½lb ling and the results left twenty anglers with 100% as there was a draw for top spot on one of the boats.

Friday dawned to nasty weather conditions again but a pensioner, Winston Watt lead the field with an excellent bag of 109lb.  Ginger Macleod took the two day lead with 200%, only 0.1 of a pound ahead of first day winner Raymond. On toting up the scores eleven anglers were sitting on the maximum 200 points going into the final day. Heaviest fish was a ling of 14.3lb closely followed by a cod weighing 14.1lbs.

Saturday was a ling and tusk only day and the weather conditions had improved slightly allowing a more comfortable day’s fishing. Kenny Laurenson landed a bag of 97lbs to take the day three top spot in a very close competitive day, only 4½lb separated the top three. Heaviest ling was a fish of 14½lb caught by Kenny Laurenson and the Allan Umphray took the prize for the biggest tusk, an excellent fish of 8.2lb.

In total six anglers finished the event with three boat wins and 300% and on count back by weight it was Kenny Laurenson who triumphed in the individual event. Kenny also picked up the heaviest fish prize with his ling caught on Saturday. Raymond Laurenson finished in second place with Howard Foster third. Top junior was Brian McCaffery and the ladies prize went to Chris Cummins.

Full individual results are available here

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