HOBIE Cat Australasia and Daiwa Australia have joined forces to stage a kayak fishing competition which will see entrants from around the world compete against each other in Australia.
The inaugural Daiwa Hobie Kayak World Fishing Championships will see 18 competitors from Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, USA and Australia, compete on the NSW mid north coast, starting on October 27 at Camden Haven on the Camden Haven River. The event will move to the Hastings River at Port Macquarie on October 29 and 30.
The tournament is the brainchild of Hobie Cat Australasia GM, Steve Fields, a former sailing world and national champion in multiple Hobie Cat Catamaran classes.
“Hobie Cat has been hosting Hobie sailing world championships since the first Hobie 16 titles held in Hawaii in 1976. They are fantastically competitive and ruthless events on the water but they are great social occasions as well,” said Fields.
“Hobie Cat has grown and diversified into new areas since those early days. Our venture into kayaks has built a huge, worldwide Hobie kayak fishing fraternity. I wanted to bring these people together somehow and came up with the Hobie Kayak World Fishing Championships. I put the concept to Daiwa Australia and they loved the idea so much they jumped straight aboard, as the major sponsor of the first such event ever to be held.”
Day One of the international competition will be a standalone event, to be followed up on October 29–30 when world championship competitors are joined on the water by grand finalists from the 13 rounds, held throughout Australia, of the Daiwa Hobie ABT Kayak Fishing Series.
Live weigh-ins of the catches will take place on the waterfront grassed area at the Water’s Edge Boutique Hotel, Buller Street Port Macquarie, from 2pm on each of the three days of the world championship competition.
For more information: www.hobiefishingworlds.com
