Swanfish is extremely excited to announce a new direction for our event.
The Swan River is the jewel in our city’s crown, and we’ve always promoted the community’s connection to the river through fishing. Going forward, we will be striving to highlight that connection even further and we’ve got some new and exciting announcements that we believe will ensure Swanfish has a bright future.
For the first time in its history, Swanfish will be catch and release only, for all species. There is nothing more important than the sustainability of our favourite species, and this change will ensure that the impact we have during Swanfish remains low forever.
We’re moving! Swanfish will now be held at Garvey Park, in Ascot. It’s a centralised location that has plenty of shade which we feel will make for a much better Swanfish experience for all.
We’re adopting new technology, which makes submitting your catches easier. We’re partnering with the great crew at TrackMyFish, and will be utilising their smartphone app to submit catches over the weekend.
We’re being more inclusive by partnering with Fishability, who offer fishing experiences for people who need help with fishing. This will ensure that anyone who wants to, can participate. Fishability will be running fishing clinics during the event to ensure that those that need help whilst fishing are given the opportunity to participate.
We’re going to teach more people to fish. We’ll be running specialised Swan River fishing clinics over the weekend to ensure that everyone can get the right knowledge to fish successfully in the Swan River.
We’re going to celebrate fishing! The traditional Sunday ‘weigh in’ will now be an event that showcases fishing clubs, tackle stores and fishing activities as well as awarding the prizes for the competition itself.
We’re very excited about what the future holds. Whilst we will be retaining the core competition elements of the event, we also want to promote it as a chance for people to come and learn about fishing in the river.
We’re grateful for the support over the years, and we look forward to seeing you at Swanfish 2018.