Moray man claims gold in Red Sea angling championship
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A FAULTY boat, high winds and lack of sleep were just some of the challenges one Moray angler overcame to win gold at an angling competition near Egypt last week.
Pete Hill, from Aberlour, flew out at the start of February to represent Scotland in the inaugural IGFA Red Sea Championships and has returned home with a gold medal.
Pete's first place finish came in the longest fish category of the event with the catch of a "healthy" golden trevally - a species which can grow to nearly four feet in length.
"I’ve certainly caught bigger fish," Pete said.
"But due to the way in which the points system works, taking into consideration factors such as the rarity of the species and that it was safely released back into the sea, it gave me the win.
"For the overall competition I was pleased to be only one point behind the Egyptian National Team and to have been placed above a strong professional team of four from South Africa."
The fishing was held over three days and two nights in what Pete described as "very challenging conditions".
And he got off to a bad start after encountering problems with his boat on day one but recovered well to have a strong finish to the competition.
Pete said: "Fours hours after the competition started our boat developed a fault which meant that the engine had to be shut down and we drifted for a while.
"Myself, support team member Audrey Shaw and the official IGFA observer had to change boats.
"We were now on the large rescue boat, which became our fishing platform for the next three days."
The weather over the course of the event was far windier than Pete had expected.
His boat had to be constantly manoeuvred on the first night of the competition meaning sleep was hard to come by.
"There was a bit of hanging on to be had whilst fishing, which made it exciting," Pete added.
"Also, due to the issues further south in Yemen, the Egyptian government had moved the fishing area a long way north of the host town of El Gouna, which put us into fairly deep water amongst an interesting variety of oil rigs and wrecked shipping."
