170 junior anglers entered the MBG&LAC junior fishing festival held Friday on Merimbula Lake.  Entries started rolling in days before and there was a steady stream of parents enrolling their children, on the day.   The event was not a competition as such but a fun day to promote catch and release fishing and provide some children with the opportunity to go fishing for the first time.   Throughout  the day children and parents were seen fishing all around Merimbula Lake.

Many caught fish and some didn’t but that’s fishing, all entrants went into the draw, boys and girls categories for over $3000 worth of prizes, which were donated by Shimano, Merimbula Tackleworld, NSW Maritime and NSW Fisheries.

Eden Radio 2SEA kept the crown entertained while the families enjoyed the BBQ and collected lots of promotional give aways from Merimbula & Sapphire Coast Promotions before both kids and parents were given an informative talk on fishing by Brett Wilson from Shimano and the kids had plenty of questions about fishing and how to catch them.

The festival concluded with Kaj "Bushy" Busch, Mark Dunphy, Brett Wilson and Chris Wright from Shimano showing the crowd over the high performance tournament boat, rigging soft plastic lures, signing autographs and Bushy even did some live demo’s with lures on the edge of the lake.

MBG&LAC hopes to hold a bigger and better festival in January 2011.