Apologies for the post delay, body and brain are sometimes not in harmony together 🙂
Regarding Friday evenings squid competition I believe most that attended not only enjoyed it but also feel it went well baring a few mins delay while I made sense of the final tallies. More on that shortly but I feel I should get the thanks out of the way first or they will likely be overlooked.

So, thanks to the following:-
Philip Metcalf, who runs the tacklebox and asked me if I could chuck this together
Robin Howard, his input into setting this up was extremely useful and he also provided a squid trip to add for the winner
Mark Robinson, who runs the walls and agreed for us to use the EAST wall in extended wall hours
Nick & Doris, who kept the cafe open for the duration we were there and even acted as guide for late arrivals
Roman Gancedo Rey who once again provided custom squid jigs as extra prizes
All of you who attended, without you there is no comp, yes we will be back next year

so, over to the

2024 all England Squid competition

Unfortunately the squid this year declined to play in the spring meaning for the 2nd year running saw no squid event. As a result the new owner of the tacklebox messaged me and asked if there was some sort of comp that could be set up on the wall with a nominal entry fee and the pot paid back 100% to the winners.
The obvious was to try and run the squid event in the autumn once that “squid run” was underway. A risky idea as is well know Autumn can bring erratic weather large water swells and strong winds impacting on the walls ability to be open and also reducing water conditions that would be unsuitable for squid.

I was advised that trying to sort dates for squid in Autumn may be harder than cat herding, I fully agreed with that advice but didn’t want a repeat of last year that a very established comp on the marina faded to nothing.
After messaging some of the known squid anglers for input and having some extensive chats with Robin Howard we came up with a date suitable for the event and suitable for the squid that had started to show quite early this year (imo) and tinkered with the format of squidding over a midday tide. The Autumn squid tend to be more active in the early evening into the night hours. Yes they were being caught during the day but the squid activity was higher at night.

The date was set SEPTEMBER 27th for a shorter comp from 6pm to 9pm a twilight into dark event.
Mark Robinson cleared things for us to Use the EAST wall with a later than agreed closing time, 30 bays were reserved for the comp with the proviso that any anglers still fishing the set bays had been warned that they would be asked to move off the set bays.

Phil Metcalf from the tacklebox said that all entry fees paid in would be paid out as shop vouchers 100% split into 2 main voucher prizes and Junior prize with 2 further prizes to go to runners ups.
Wall fee’s for 1 rod would apply specifically to the extended hours event and an entry fee of £5 for all.
Thus we had prizes in order of 1st to 4th with the proviso of 1 prize per person of :-
Longest total combined length of squid and the said squid trip from Robin Howard
single longest squid
2nd longest total length caught
2nd longest single squid
We also had a voucher for best junior.
Thus we were hopefully all set to go on the day with the only thing to do was chalk the bays the day before and keep our fingers crossed the weather would behave……

And here I should now mention that I cocked up ! having fixed the date a month or more in advance my wife picked her moment and reminded me that the 27th was the date I & her would be in Eastbourne to watch Showaddywady in concert ! OOPS, a rapid run around resulted in a warden or 2 being commandeered to do the sign in and over see things, great all sorted , cafe people informed of the comp a week ahead sit back relax & chill

The weather ? nope It decided not to play ball !
Typical autumn weather started to close in from the Monday and with everyone watching the weather things were touch and go with the hope of a crack in them conditions. Come the Wed it was obviously fooked so reluctantly call it off and being as there wasnt a planned back up date looked at that seemed it.

For me, I returned to Btn on the Saturday and thought what to do, I spoke to Phil and said ok, I could run it on the next Friday but the conditions wouldn’t be great even if the weather held and it would be a one shot or cancel again until next year.
The general opinion was do it, and thus word was again put out that Fri 4th would be it, a dropping tide in the dark for squid, for me It was a totally unknown as to what would happen, most squidding locally seems to be mid tide and I had almost zero feedback of squid attempts on low water but little option to go for it, or to cancel.

Thankfully the weather held enough to go ahead even though the water was still somewhat coloured. We had a mild evening and a slight northerly which was tbh the best we could hope for and so the day before I went down and chalked the peg beginning on bay 10 as the 1st peg and chalked of 30 bays in Brighton pink chalk. Had a chat with Nick & Doris who run the cafe on the east and they said that they would stay open on the night for the duration of the comp.

Friday sign in began at 4.30pm
and as I arrived there were already quite a few waiting and thus it was straight into getting squidders signed up so that they could go and find/set up on their randomly drawn pegs.
PHIL METCALF from the tacklebox had set the entry at a fiver and said that the top 2 plus (if any) the top junior would receive shop vouchers based on 100% of the entry fee, and there would be other prizes of a cool box for 3rd and 4th. ROMAN GANCEDO REY also arrived with some of his custom made squid jigs to give to the winners.(more on that when I have finished waffling the biggest report post ever 😉 )
The final prize was supplied by local fishing guide and skipper ROBIN HOWARD of a squid trip with him adding to the 1st overall prize.

As people signed in they were reminded/advised that for this comp all headlight were to be filtered or blue lights so as to filter out as much as possible the glare often given out on powerful 5000+ lumen lights that seem to be common place. As well as the blue light enforcement those taking part were reminded that there would be a ban on any other lights fixed to the wall or in the water but small hand torches would be ok if needed to see kit and gear as long as they were kept wall side.
Before the off at 6pm, I did a swift count of entries and with 2 dads and 3 juniors still on route and 1 other known late arrival we would have 38 entered, IMO not too shabby being as things had been called off completely the week prior, plus 38 was very close to numbers on the previous 2 comps that were run on a Sunday daytime in the spring.

Thus 6pm came and the comp began in dull daylight and within 5 mins of start the 1st squid was caught, please forgive me I cant recal for the life of me who landed the first but I did keep the list of who caught what and on which bay that I will list here in a while. Shortly after the 1st a 2nd was caught and things were looking quite decent considering things were almost thrown together last minute.
Come 6.30pm all entering had found me and got themselves in place and squidding. I will now mention that NICK & DORIS from the cafe had played a blinder, as well as agreeing to stay open, NICK acted as guide bringing up the late arrivals to me as we had draw pegs for them as requested, not only that NICK had made it clear that if people order he would deliver to the pegs that people were fishing, very unexpected and super helpful.
As the light dropped it became clear that the no extra lighting was working very well. Not only was it reducing the infamous light levels on the wall but the low light levels meant the general chatter noise was evidently lower that had been the almost “normal” people were very chatty during the comp but as the light dropped e headlamps got turned on the vocal levels clearly lowered. The Irony of the change to the lighting that night was that My mobile scooter front lights were the brightest light moving along the east wall and drew a few chuckles and comments about not having blue lights on my wheels !

Come 9pm I was on the lower pegs and as I travelled up the wall I was please to see that people had at 9pm promptly started packing their kit away resulting in barely a word from me that the comp had ended.
Rather than sort the prizes out back at the Tacklebox as originally planned it was sensibly decided to “get it done” on the benches by the cafe who was still open and remained open until we had all cleared off, a nice touch from them of which many took advantage to grab a final drink.

Now came the “figure it all out” bit with the results and once all the sheets were in, we not only had an obvious 1st , 2nd and a JUNIOR who had caught, a quick count told us 16 squid had been caught in the 3 hours on the low tide & slack water. A decent number and better than some of the spring events in past years. All in all things worked out well and we will look at running another one in the Autumn next year, perhaps even two comps if the spring run happens next year. And so, I finally get to who won what and will list all of those who caught and where below the prize winners.
PHIL METCALF had indicated to me that the prizes would be one per competitor so should someone be eligible as such for 2 of the prizes they would need to pick their choice , he also indicated that not only was there a junior 1st prize but he would also give a little something to all 4 juniors that had shown up and stuck it out to the end of the comp.

And so we come to the prizes of which PHIL indicated another change and instead of vouchers the first two would split the pot of £190 equally so CHARLIE and MAHDI received £95 each !

1st total combined total length was CHARLIE with 3 squid at 22.5/18 & 17cm total 57.5cm he also won the squid trip with ROBIN and a custom jig from ROMAN
2nd with the largest squid of the comp was Mahdi who landed a squid of 24cm and as well as the cash prize got a custom jig from ROMAN
3rd prize would have been for most individual squid which was 3 from CHARLIE and with the 1 prize p.p. JAMIE was awarded 3rd with 2 squid of 16 and 18cm which was the 2nd best total length and received a cool bag from PHIL
4th prize for runner up on single squid length was JOHN A with a squid of 21.1cm and also received a cool bag from PHIL

On to the JUNIOR prize and im please to see a jnr catching squid, youngsters catching targeted species has a sort of buzz all of its own so to the winning junior
FINN KELLY with one of the earliest squid caught and a decent size of 20cm who received a shop voucher for £15
The final award(s) went to all 3 of the other juniors that showed up and were all give £5 out of PHILs pocket which was a nice touch. Three of ROMANs lures were also given to the juniors (yes there were 4 of them but we only had 3 to share)
Well done to all the juniors who attended and with parental permission thier names are listed here as…..
FINN KELLY/EDI GILES/ALEXANDER and ARCHER well done lads on not only sticking it out but your behaviour was excellent and deserved a mention. Hopefully we will see more of you all fishing.

Finally I will list in random order who got what on the night.
MAHDI 1 x 24cm peg 22 add 10 for the bay number on the wall
MIRH TRAN 20.5 & 16.5cm peg 11
JAMIE 16 & 18cm peg 16
CHARLIE 22.5,17 & 18cm peg 13
JOHN A 21.1cm peg 27
ROMAN 16cm peg 21
MASARO 18cm peg15
LEE S. GIBBS 17.8cm peg 26
JAMES 19.8cm peg 9
CAILIN 21cm PEG7
DARREN P 17cm peg 18
JNR
FINN 20cm peg 20
A big thankyou to all who attended, without you there is no comp and regarding the nights lighting on the wall or lack of I will put up a separate post regarding future light use on the marina walls.
well done all, this years comp was a pleasure to do and was great to see that all pegs on finish were clear of litter so the wall close down was done very quickly

And with tat I bid you all ADIEU
F