Our regular monthly meeting in the Marina bar was held a week later due to the May Bank Holiday, and we had a great turnout once again. There was a lot to report and more to plan, so read on.

First up was a report on the club competition standings which are reproduced below. Dan Lumsden is in the lead overall. Pete Churchill has 15 on the slate in the Species Hunt and there are still over seven months to go, so lots more changes expected!

Fish Of The Month was awarded to Jock Park for a thornback of 15lb (125% of Specimen) which is a very nice fish and returned. It currently leads the Catch & Release Cup too.

The Open Bream Competition was a great success with 58 entries and 26 boats. You can read the full report here. We were ticked off for leaving dead fish floating in the water so we will put up notices for visitors by the cleaning station. Fish trimmings need to be put in the water on an ebbing tide so they are carried away, and any swim bladders popped so they feed the crabs without offending anyone.

The SAC Meet & Fish event last Saturday as part of the Marina Social Day was another great success, particularly as SMAC entrants Peter Churchill and Peter Kinchin carried off two of the five main prizes with Ray Plomer and Richard Pack coming a very close second. The full report is here.

Our next event is the SMAC Annual BBQ which will be held on Saturday 22nd June. There will be free food and a special free Members Raffle, plus a main fundraising raffle with some excellent prizes. Members and families are all welcome, and to help us plan the event please can you book your free tickets via this link.  £500 is being spent on raffle prizes, a similar amount on food and of course you’ll have great company so this is well worth coming to.

SMDAC have challenged SMAC to an inter-club pier competition. This will be held at South Parade Pier, Southsea from 3pm to 9pm on a date to be confirmed. The timings are already confirmed because that’s when beer and fish and chips can be bought. We’ll have to think of some rules before then, too.

The next Open competition is the Species Competition which will be held on Sunday 11th August with a reserve date of 18th August. We’ll start promoting the event so watch out for details as they are published.

We haven’t yet had responses to the questions posed to the Southsea Marina manager, Dave Frey at the March meeting. Steve will chase him up.

Next Meeting will be on Tuesday 4th June at 7pm in the Marina Bar as usual.