Grab your rods and join local anglers at Marsden this month to help our native fish reclaim their waterways.
The 2024 Logan Pest Fishing Cup will be held on 24 November at JJ Smith Park.
The annual event, run by fishing school and conservation organisation 2 Bent Rods, is more than just a competition – it is a united community effort to remove invasive fish species damaging the city’s waterways.
Organisation owner and co-founder Sam Beckmann said a lot of people aren’t aware of the damage caused by pest species.
“They are an introduced species – mainly tilapia and carp – which compete with our native fish for food and oxygen,” she said.
“They degrade our water so our natives can’t survive, so we need to give our natives as much of a helping hand that we can.”
The event will start at 8am and include a range of categories and age groups.
Ms Beckmann said there were “strict rules” when it came to catching pest fish.
“If you catch one, then it is illegal to put it back in the water or to use as bait, and you can’t consume it,” she said.
“You must dispatch it and bin or bury it.”
For those who win one of the competition’s categories – which range from longest carp to best native fish to biggest haul – there are some prizes to be won.
“There will be a couple of thousands of dollars’ worth of prizes – just in kayaks alone,” Ms Beckmann said.
“I always have a really good prize for rubbish collection – sometimes that prize is better than the one for actually catching the fish.”
2 Bent Rods has operated in Logan and the south-east of Queensland for 20 years and it all began thanks to a day Ms Beckmann’s family spent fishing.
“My husband and I took our young family fishing at Wellington Point for the day with a yabby pump and bait net and ended up with 20 or 30 kids following us around,” she said.
“They lived at the beach but had never seen a yabby or a fish before, so we thought we would do something about it.
“We’ve run this competition for a few years, and it’s the third time at Marsden.”
Get tickets for this year’s comp here: events.humanitix.com/logan-pest-fishing-cup-2024.
