We had a good crowd in the Marina Bar on Tuesday to catch up on the latest club activities. The Marina Bar has just launched a new menu which might have contributed to the attraction too (thumbs up for the burger and blue cheese by the way).

First up was voting on Fish of the Month. Dave Ford won with a specimen Small-eyed Ray of 11lbs, a good fish. This is 100% of the specimen weight. The fish was released.

Other club standings were confirmed, as listed below.

The new Scales Hut is now in place. The door can be opened with a code which can be obtained from the marina staff, although if you know the code that is used elsewhere on site you can guess it correctly. The electrical power point has been installed and a floor will soon follow. The height of the hut has been kept low so as not to obstruct visibility from the marina office, so don’t expect to have a party in it.

The Open Cod Competition will be held on 14th November.  High Water is a Neap at 08:20 with a mean range of 2.4 metres.  This is very convenient for marina-based boats because the Cill will be open from 05:13 to 11:13, and again from 17:44 so we can put our boats away after the presentation which starts at 6pm in the Marina Bar.

Chris Ellis gave us an update on next year’s Open Species Competition which will be held in the summer, probably a weekend in August and this time running over two days. The organisers of the Sea Angling Classic will be loaning their mobile app for competitors to register their catches in real time.

Steve Kelly passed on a message from Premier Marinas for all members to make sure their boats have the boat name clearly marked on the boat hull or superstructure to avoid confusion during boat movements carried out by the yard crew.

Neville Merritt asked if members would be interested in a Fairtrade alternative for branded SMAC hoodies. Currently Vintage Pig can supply standard hoodies with our logo, although not everybody knows that. If there is sufficient interest in a good quality Fairtrade hoodie, Neville will bring a sample to a future meeting.

The next meeting will be at 7:30pm on Tuesday 7th December in the Marina Bar.