Author: Neville Merritt (Page 7 of 43)

Our annual Presentation of Awards evening will be held on Saturday 2nd March in the Marina Bar. This is a combined event between SMAC and SMDAC and is always a fun evening. Cups, prizes, certificates and awards will be given to the winners of the 2023 Season competitions. There will be a free drink for each member, free food and a cash raffle with over £500-worth of prizes to be won. Wives and girlfriends are also welcome! Presentations start at 8pm so come along in plenty of time to grab a drink (and a seat) before the ceremonies. This year we will be unveiling the Bill Arnold Memorial Trophy lovingly crafted by his friends and awarded according to Bill’s own wish – although what that actually is will be revealed on the night!

The first SMAC monthly meeting of the 2024 Season is our Annual General Meeting, where we appoint the Committee, update any Club Rules if necessary and generally plan ahead for the next 12 months. There’s quite a lot to report so grab a drink and read on…

First item on the agenda was a bit different – Steve Kelly unveiled the Bill Arnold Memorial Trophy (pictured). This is based on an idea by Bill himself. It includes his own Alvey reel and slabs of oak, with feet made from bronze marine bearings. Peter Kinchin made up the trophy for us, and it will have an engraved plaque when it is presented at our Presentation Night. The actual award is still a secret, so come along to the Presentation and find out!

Our Committee was re-elected with the exception of our late and much missed Treasurer, Bill. Dan Lumsden was voted in as our new Treasurer. Bill was also an awesome seller of raffle tickets, so as Eleanor Atkins was his protégé on the last couple of sales we decided in her absence she would be a worthy successor to the role. See what happens if you don’t attend our AGMs?

The 2024 Committee is as follows:

• Commodore: Tim Andrews
• Chairman: Steve Kelly
• Deputy Chairman: Neville Merritt (+ writer of things and BBQ cook)
• Communications Officer: Steve Andrews
• Treasurer: Dan Lumsden
• Open Competition Organisers: Steve Kelly, Neville Merritt, Dan Lumsden, John Evans
• Raffle Ticket Sales: Eleanor Atkins

There were no requests to change any Club Rules so the existing Rules stand.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to Dan Lumsden for his cod of 10lb 1oz. Richard Pack’s whiting was a smaller % specimen weight and anyway we decided that he had already won enough prizes and cups for that fish (Cod Competition 2^nd Prize and Best Placed SMAC Member cup).

The 2023 Season Results are below – congratulations to all the winners, and Dan Lumsden is our overall Club Champion. We’ll celebrate all these at our joint SMAC and SMDAC Presentation Night on 2^nd March so bring along your partners for a great evening. There will be a free drink for every member, free food and a raffle. We’ll be spending £500 on raffle prizes so it’s worth buying lots of tickets! We will award the cups which live in our Trophy Cabinet, matching awards to keep and Angling Trust Specimen certificates and medals.

Our Club Scales will need officially calibrating if we are to continue to get Specimen Fish Certificates from the Angling Trust, so a calibration fee was authorised. We now have a set of calibration weights for checking too.

Following the interest in our club branded hoodies, polo shirts and the anniversary t-shirts, we had a request for SMAC branded beanies and caps. Neville Merritt showed samples of hats and there was enough interest from members for us to get quotes for a batch of each, to include child sizes as well. If the price is reasonable we’ll buy a stock for sale to members.

Southsea Marina has a new manager – Dave Frey. Dave has been working with Premier since 2016 at other marinas. We agreed to invite him to meet SMAC at the next Monthly Meeting in March, and also to drop into our Presentation Night if he felt so inclined. Hopefully he will be so impressed by our good behaviour that he will look kindly on future requests for SMAC member marina benefits.

Finally, John Wearn laid down the challenge of a SMAC vs. SMDAC competition and we agreed that a summer evening pier competition sounded like a very good idea. A date will be proposed and rules defined.

Our next monthly meeting will be Tuesday 5^th March but don’t forget, our Presentation Night is the previous Saturday evening on 2^nd March. See you there!

Happy New Year everyone! Our first meeting of 2024 and our last meeting of the 2023 Season was held a week later than usual because of the New Year break. Despite a conspiracy between the icy weather and the Eastern Road shenanigans we had a good turnout of our core supporters.  Steve opened the meeting as usual with an update of the Club Standings, which are listed below. We have just three weeks to go in our SMAC Season and still plenty of time for changes at the top, particularly Cod and Species competitions.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to Kev Johnson for his impressive 12lb bass (pictured).

Steve gave us copies of the local Tide Tables, and if you want to download your own you can do so here.

The Cod Competition rollover date is 14th January, and as the  weather forecast stands at the moment we could be in luck this time.

In brief Marina news, the Southsea Manager Peter Pring is moving back to HQ, and the new manager will be announced very soon. The shed situation seems to be still unresolved, so we are hoping it will be top of the agenda for the new manager. We will also be renewing our contact with Premier PR and Marketing, in the hope that we can jointly kick-start some RYA Active Marina activity after the recent lapse.

Our next meeting will be our AGM on Tuesday 6th February at 7pm in the Marina Bar. This is the one meeting in the year where we can review rules, appoint or reappoint the Committee Members and consider suggestions for changes. If you have anything you would like to raise at the AGM, please could you message or email Steve Kelly beforehand so we can give sufficient consideration to your suggestions. Thank you and see you soon!

We traditionally fish this club competition between Christmas and the New Year (I’m told the new term for this is Twixmas), for the largest singe cod, or whiting. Boat caught, winner takes all. Well, these are our rules and we can change them if we like so we did. This has always been a social event and this year it became more social then ever, because the weather was awful and everyone wanted the social event anyway. Rather than postpone, we decided to fish the event in and around the marina and cod being unlikely, the prize would go to the most fish caught.

Colds, Covid and family pressures had depleted our expected lineup but despite that, 12 hardy anglers braved wind, rain and lack of worms to fish for four hours for the Mandela Cup. Some decided to snuggle down in the shelter of their cockpits, others risked a wetting and lost hats to fish from the holding pontoon and marina shores. After a few false starts involving crabs, Dan set the hare running with a surprisingly decent wrasse. Ray challenged with a bass that must have hatched yesterday, Pete found another wrasse hiding under the pontoon and Luke scored with a bass that wasn’t at all bad for a marina catch.

The result was a neat tie for all four, sharing the prize pool of £30 which must have lasted all of one round in the bar. After the celebrations, there had been a plan to continue to a curry venue but history doesn’t record whether that actually happened. Anyway, congratulations to all those who fished and well done the winners. Hopefully we can get back to boat fishing and cod chasing with the postponed Open Cod Competition in January.

Tonight we drank a toast to the memory of a dear friend and SMAC member, Bill Arnold who passed away last week. Bill was a huge supporter of the club and did a lot of practical work behind the scenes to help. He was a regular contributor at our meetings, a fearsome seller of raffle tickets and of course a very competitive angler. We will miss him terribly.

To recognise his contribution to the club, there is a proposal to create a new prize which will be announced at the Presentation Night. Bill himself had the idea for both the award and the construction of the prize itself, so it will be nice to see it all come together.

We had a great turnout to the meeting and there was a lot to talk about. The Club Standings are listed below – Dan Lumsden leads (by one point) the Species Competition, the Bass Cup has changed hands and we have a new leader in the Cod Pool. It’s all still happening! The Bass Season remains open until the end of the SMAC year now, so there will be no early finishes.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to the larger of two cod entered, Tony Skinner’s cod of 8lb 5oz.

The Open Cod Competition still hasn’t happened due to the weather, and if it is postponed again on 10^th the next possible Sunday (due to committee availability, Christmas and New Year) will be 7^th January.

We have had very positive messages of support from Premier Marinas so we are hopeful that this will extend to more storage facilities and other practical measures. In turn, SMAC will continue to attract new members and new berth holders for them!

The Mandela Cup competition will be held on Saturday 30^th December, to be followed by our traditional annual curry. This time it will be at one of the Albert Road establishments in Southsea. Details and a poll of members intending to go will be circulated separately.

Our Presentation Night will be held on Saturday 2^nd March in the Marina Bar. This year the cost of glass prize replicas has increased considerably, so instead we will be giving out vouchers from our two main tackle shop sponsors, Fish-On and Cosham Angling.

The January meeting will be held a week later than normal due to New Year, so we’ll see you on 9^th January 2024.