It’s our 10th Anniversary Year and the weather gods were smiling on our annual Summer BBQ. If it’s not windy, people go fishing. If it’s not sunny people don’t fancy sitting around a BBQ. So the perfect weather combination for an Angling Club BBQ is sunny and breezy, which is exactly what we had on Saturday. We had a record attendance of 50 members and families for an afternoon of food, chat, a drink or two and of course our famous raffle!

Food consisted of some plump mackerel provided by Team Harvest Moon, freshly smoked; traditional BBQ fare (and lots of it); topped off by scones, cream and jam from Eleanor Atkins and lovely fresh strawberries from Barbi Hutton.

Our raffles always give great prizes, top up club funds and provide plenty of live entertainment – the four candles provided more laughs than the Two Ronnies! There are two raffles, a free one for club members and a fundraising raffle where some members demonstrated that the more tickets you buy the more chances you have. Seems fair to me, and as a result we raised over £700 for club funds to pay for these events. We would like to thank Bill Arnold and Eleanor Atkins for their amazing ticket sales and our prize sponsors British Big Game Fishing; Premier Marinas; Newnham Builders; Just Fishing Boats; Prestige Plumbing and Southsea Marina Disabled Angling Club.

We now have 73 members fishing from 41 boats berthed in the marina. On Saturday we also welcomed new member Steve Holt who, like others, has transferred to Southsea Marina because of the SMAC and the active fishing community here. We are very grateful to Premier Marinas for their continued support of our club activities – including the BBQ area!

Final thanks go to Steve Kelly for all the organising; the team of helpers, fetchers and clearers who put it all together and tidied up afterwards; and the roaming photographers including Barbi Hutton and Steve Andrews who were kind enough to share their pictures below.

Neville Merritt