Last year’s winner Denis McKane with the heaviest boat-caught specimen ever recorded in a local bass festival. It weighed 16-4-3. (0481673)

AN UNPRECEDENTED prize fund is up for grabs in this year’s Guernsey Open Bass Festival.
A total value of up to £10,000-worth of prizes is available if the current Bailiwick record is broken.
Anybody who has a catch over the record will receive £5,000, while there are sums of £600 for the winners in both the shore and the boat categories.
The four-day event kicks off today and finishes on Monday.
Brian Montgomery, one of the event’s organisers, is hoping that the competition will attract more novices and take the number back up to a level that it used to reach.
‘In the past there have been as many as 500 people taking part and it is Guernsey’s most prestigious angling event,’ he said.
‘Recently, though, the numbers have dwindled and have gone down to as low as 100 at times.’
However, Montgomery believes that the last couple of years have seen the open given some much-needed impetus.
‘We have been helped out by sponsors recently and it is starting to make the event much more attractive again,’ he said.