Source: Angling Trust
Local restaurants, retailers, community groups and top experts from the Billingsgate Seafood Training School entertained the festival-goers while anglers competed in a series of big prize matches and angling coaches provided the public with free casting sessions.
Fishing conditions were tough over the course of the nine-day festival with the boat fishing match being delayed by a week as the weather over the final weekend deteriorated.
The lucky winners walked away with big cash prizes and even a fishing holiday to Norway while talented juniors who competed in the junior match were identified to enter the Angling Trust’s ‘Talent Pathway Programme’.
Attracting 25,000 people to a festival in a town of 40,000 residents makes the Bexhill Festival one of, if not the, biggest community angling event ever to have been staged in England and has brought sea angling right into the heart of the local community.
The Angling Trust report that they were very proud to be a partner in the festival once again and thanked all of the volunteers involved in making it such a success.
