Author: Neville Merritt (Page 2 of 38)

Happy New Year everyone! Our first meeting of 2024 and our last meeting of the 2023 Season was held a week later than usual because of the New Year break. Despite a conspiracy between the icy weather and the Eastern Road shenanigans we had a good turnout of our core supporters.  Steve opened the meeting as usual with an update of the Club Standings, which are listed below. We have just three weeks to go in our SMAC Season and still plenty of time for changes at the top, particularly Cod and Species competitions.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to Kev Johnson for his impressive 12lb bass (pictured).

Steve gave us copies of the local Tide Tables, and if you want to download your own you can do so here.

The Cod Competition rollover date is 14th January, and as the  weather forecast stands at the moment we could be in luck this time.

In brief Marina news, the Southsea Manager Peter Pring is moving back to HQ, and the new manager will be announced very soon. The shed situation seems to be still unresolved, so we are hoping it will be top of the agenda for the new manager. We will also be renewing our contact with Premier PR and Marketing, in the hope that we can jointly kick-start some RYA Active Marina activity after the recent lapse.

Our next meeting will be our AGM on Tuesday 6th February at 7pm in the Marina Bar. This is the one meeting in the year where we can review rules, appoint or reappoint the Committee Members and consider suggestions for changes. If you have anything you would like to raise at the AGM, please could you message or email Steve Kelly beforehand so we can give sufficient consideration to your suggestions. Thank you and see you soon!

We traditionally fish this club competition between Christmas and the New Year (I’m told the new term for this is Twixmas), for the largest singe cod, or whiting. Boat caught, winner takes all. Well, these are our rules and we can change them if we like so we did. This has always been a social event and this year it became more social then ever, because the weather was awful and everyone wanted the social event anyway. Rather than postpone, we decided to fish the event in and around the marina and cod being unlikely, the prize would go to the most fish caught.

Colds, Covid and family pressures had depleted our expected lineup but despite that, 12 hardy anglers braved wind, rain and lack of worms to fish for four hours for the Mandela Cup. Some decided to snuggle down in the shelter of their cockpits, others risked a wetting and lost hats to fish from the holding pontoon and marina shores. After a few false starts involving crabs, Dan set the hare running with a surprisingly decent wrasse. Ray challenged with a bass that must have hatched yesterday, Pete found another wrasse hiding under the pontoon and Luke scored with a bass that wasn’t at all bad for a marina catch.

The result was a neat tie for all four, sharing the prize pool of £30 which must have lasted all of one round in the bar. After the celebrations, there had been a plan to continue to a curry venue but history doesn’t record whether that actually happened. Anyway, congratulations to all those who fished and well done the winners. Hopefully we can get back to boat fishing and cod chasing with the postponed Open Cod Competition in January.

Tonight we drank a toast to the memory of a dear friend and SMAC member, Bill Arnold who passed away last week. Bill was a huge supporter of the club and did a lot of practical work behind the scenes to help. He was a regular contributor at our meetings, a fearsome seller of raffle tickets and of course a very competitive angler. We will miss him terribly.

To recognise his contribution to the club, there is a proposal to create a new prize which will be announced at the Presentation Night. Bill himself had the idea for both the award and the construction of the prize itself, so it will be nice to see it all come together.

We had a great turnout to the meeting and there was a lot to talk about. The Club Standings are listed below – Dan Lumsden leads (by one point) the Species Competition, the Bass Cup has changed hands and we have a new leader in the Cod Pool. It’s all still happening! The Bass Season remains open until the end of the SMAC year now, so there will be no early finishes.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to the larger of two cod entered, Tony Skinner’s cod of 8lb 5oz.

The Open Cod Competition still hasn’t happened due to the weather, and if it is postponed again on 10^th the next possible Sunday (due to committee availability, Christmas and New Year) will be 7^th January.

We have had very positive messages of support from Premier Marinas so we are hopeful that this will extend to more storage facilities and other practical measures. In turn, SMAC will continue to attract new members and new berth holders for them!

The Mandela Cup competition will be held on Saturday 30^th December, to be followed by our traditional annual curry. This time it will be at one of the Albert Road establishments in Southsea. Details and a poll of members intending to go will be circulated separately.

Our Presentation Night will be held on Saturday 2^nd March in the Marina Bar. This year the cost of glass prize replicas has increased considerably, so instead we will be giving out vouchers from our two main tackle shop sponsors, Fish-On and Cosham Angling.

The January meeting will be held a week later than normal due to New Year, so we’ll see you on 9^th January 2024.