Our Annual General Meeting was very well attended, probably more due to everyone being starved of fishing conversations than actually wanting to debate rule changes! This meeting is sandwiched between the end of one season and the start of another, so we marked the occasion by reminding ourselves who won what in 2022 (competition list below). We’ll make a bigger thing of this at Presentation Night on 4th March. We will be borrowing the ECA disco equipment so if anyone has a suitable music playlist please let Steve know. We’ll make a donation to RNLI/GAFIRS in appreciation.

Still in 2022 Season – Peter Churchill picked up his prize for 19th place in the Open Cod Competition. He was extremely pleased with his mackerel feathers, which was nice.  We also voted on Fish Of The Month for January, which was won by Neil Glazier for a very decent undulate ray of 17lb. SMAC sent 20 Specimen Forms to the Angling Trust in 2022 which shows some of us can catch some decent fish. That sounded like it included me, but it didn’t.

The Species Hunt competition was fiercely fought to the end and is probably our most popular competition. It certainly gets a lot of airtime on the WhatsApp Group. Only days into February, the 2023 hunt is already under way!

Subs are now due for 2023 – please can all members pay their £20 to Steve Kelly. This must be done before any catches are recorded, and definitely before you get a free drink at Awards Night. With renewals we are expecting 68 members and 39 boats which puts the club funds in a very healthy position to pay for our annual events, prizes and competitions.

We then moved on to the AGM agenda. First up was to vote in a new Committee. If anyone was hoping for some drama here they were disappointed because we all voted the same committee back in again. A warning to others, once in there is no escape.

  • Chairman – Steve Kelly
  • Deputy Chairman, Competition Assistant, Writer of Things and BBQ Cook – Neville Merritt
  • Commodore – Tim Andrews
  • Treasurer – Bill Arnold
  • Social Secretary – Steve Andrews

There was a minor rule change voted in – all competition entries (species hunt, catch and release, species cups etc) have to be claimed and recorded within 48 hours of capture. We also have a new competition and prize. Thanks to a cup donated by Dave Newnham, we now have a Brill and Turbot Competition. Following a vote, the rules were agreed that qualifying fish for this annual cup must be a minimum of 2lb for a brill and 3lb for a turbot, and weighed on the club scales. The cup is awarded for the best specimen of either species.

The meeting closed with Any Other Business. John Evans reminded us of the sad news that a local angler was drowned this week off White Cliff Bay. Lifejackets save lives, and now is a good time to do annual checks (see here for a how-to). Bill Arnold also reminded us we were planning to invite the RNLI in for a safety talk at one of our monthly meetings, so that needs to be organised.

The next event is Presentation Night on Saturday 4th March in the Marina Bar, from 7:30pm. A free drink for members, snacks and a raffle – partners and families welcome. We will be awarding the cups and prizes listed below. The next regular monthly meeting will be on Tuesday 7th March at 6:30pm and we’ll decide at that meeting whether to swich to our summer meeting times in future.

 

Neville Merritt
February 2023