On a day so stormy we even considered changing the meeting date, we had the best attendance ever! Thank you to everyone who braved the wind and rain, including new members Ben Munday and Michael Chapman.

After presenting Tim Andrews with his long-overdue specimen certificate for a bream from June 2021(!) we moved on to the club competition standings. These are shown below. The Species Hunt always gets lots of attention at this time of year and Pete Churchill and Dan Lumsden are neck and neck with 40 species each!

The Cod Pool is open and currently stands at £250. First and second place give cash prizes for the biggest cod caught by members from a Southsea Marina boat between now and the end of January. If you haven’t put your money down yet please give Steve Kelly £10 otherwise your cod won’t win.

On the subject of cod, the Open Cod Competition has been moved to 13th November to give the whiting a chance to arrive. Unfortunately the weather has prevented us finding out if they have but I’m sure they will soon. There are plenty of prizes so everyone will be in with a chance of something – cod or big whiting. The Mandela Cup date will be decided at the December meeting – it will probably be held over the Christmas and New Year break.

Fish Of The Month was a bit of a no-brainer this month, with a Blonde Ray of 16lb (pictured) and a brill of 1lb 12oz both submitted by Dave Newenham. He wins FOTM, I’m assuming for the ray because we didn’t vote! Dave kindly donated his prize money to the RNLI fund. On a side note, at the next AGM we will be formalising which charities we support in 2023. To date we have always supported the RNLI and GAFIRS on an ad-hoc basis but with other deserving local causes this is worth a discussion.

The next meeting will be held at 6:30 on Tuesday 6th December in the Marina Bar as usual. This time we will have a special guest speaker, Steve Hunt who will be talking about the wreck of the Flag Theofano, aka The Dean Tail Wreck, where we all stock up on mackerel bait in the summer. The wreck has an interesting story behind it, and still some unanswered questions. Ex-RN, Steve is an experienced pilot boat coxswain and assistant Harbour Master in Langstone so he knows a lot about the sea, shipping and the local area. Do come along and hear the story.

Neville Merritt