Four years ago the planning for the sea-angling equivalent of football’s Euro Tournament began when the European Federation of Sea Anglers decided to hold the European Boat Championships for 2000 in Weymouth.

This was a massive vote of confidence in Weymouth as the premier sea angling venue in England but there were fears initially that Weymouth would not be able to cope with such a massive event in terms of accommodation, parking, presentation venue, moorings for the extra boats and support from the local council.

By the conclusion of the five day Festival EFSA organisers were so overwhelmed with everything that Weymouth had to offer that they declared Weymouth would be the only port they would consider when the Championships return to England in 2006.

The Weymouth and Portland Borough Council were brilliant. Throughout the planning stages they assisted with advice and publicity, organising accommodation and offering free moorings to the charter boats from other ports invited to swell the numbers of the Weymouth fleet. It was an impressive sight each morning to see the 22 boats lined up waiting for the contestants to board. The Council also laid on the Pavilion for the presentations and throughout the week were totally supportive.

After all the hard work everything was finally down to the weather. With everyone’s fingers firmly crossed, the first day of the Championships (11 - 15th Sept) dawned bright and calm which set the pattern for most of the week.

The first two days were Line Class days. This meant the competitors had to fish with 6kg line as provided by the sponsors Ande. With the EFSA points system (all fish are awarded points and immediately returned alive to the sea) heavily in favour of big fish such as conger, anglers needed all their skill to coax the bigger species to the boat.

The European anglers are not used to big fish as commercial over-fishing has wiped out most of their own stocks. They are also not used to the tides found around Portland so imagine the daunting prospect of fighting conger eel up to 60lbs from 360 feet in raging tides requiring 2lbs of lead to hold bottom and just 6kg (13.2lb) breaking strain line to achieve all this.

Apart from the conger; tope, huss, pollack and cod all featured on the first two days with the eventual winner Roland Larsson from Sweden accumulating 374 points ahead of Wynn Parry on 350 points and then England’s Steve Spencer on 322 points.

Aud Holmedal from Norway won the Ladies’ section ahead of Tina Lustig from Wales.

Steve Spencer and Weymouth’s Andy Selby won the two-man team event totalling 548 points ahead of Swedish brothers Roland and Dennis Larsson on 532 points.

The main event took place on days three to five and after 20 hours of intensely competitive fishing Jesus Balhan from Gibraltar emerged as the EFSA European Boat Champion having amassed a perfect score of 300 points with three straight boat wins on each day. England’s Steve Souter also scored 300 points but was beaten by a fish points count back. Top local angler was Dave McCune who finished 15th out of 254 competitors.

This really was a wonderful week concluding with a Saturday afternoon and evening of presentations and dinner in a packed Ocean Room at the Weymouth Pavilion. It was the end of a week in which Weymouth could be proud of itself to have hosted what the organisers described as the best ever Championships ever held in the long history of EFSA.

Paul Whittall. Offshore Rebel Charters