Category: SMAC (Page 1 of 9)

The meeting started with a quick catch-up of prizes won but not collected including Specimen Certificates for Sam Cofie (pictured), then we were onto the Club Standings. That was a very short agenda item because nothing much has happened except Pete Churchill has Best Specimen with a spurdog of 14lb 8oz, and he also leads the Species Hunt with 9. That’s it, everything else on the table is blank. Roll on Spring!

Fish of the Month was a little more entertaining because we had Pete’s spurdog plus another from Peter Atkinson, except he had measured his at 109cm instead of weighing it. Google AI estimated 77lb and if we are trusting our future to AI it looks like we are all doomed. Anyway, it turned out that Peter’s mystery-weight fish wasn’t caught on a club boat anyway and was disqualified leaving FOTM to Pete Churchill.

Our club membership stands at 71 paid members, 2 lifetime members and 6 junior members. SMAC represents 47 boats berthed in Southsea Marina, which is a significant percentage. Club funds are healthy, enough to pay for our summer BBQ (free to members and family) and our end of season Presentation Night in 2026. Save the date for the BBQ – it will be on Saturday 28^th June in the Marina BBQ area as usual.

The Sea Angling Classic Meet & Fish event will be hosted by Premier at Southsea Marina on Saturday 26^th April. This year it will be a charity fundraising event for Sea Spirit and sponsored by Crewsaver who will be donating some good prizes. Entry £15 per angler, minimum 2 and maximum 4 per boat. You need to pre-book your entry here

Our next competition is the Bream Open on Sunday 4^th May, details here

Our new Open Bass Competition is scheduled for 5^th July, details will be confirmed nearer the date.  

Next meeting will be Tuesday 6^th May at 7pm in the Marina Bar

Our Presentation Night is one of the social highlights of our calendar when we can celebrate all the successes of the previous season and have a few drinks and fun as well. As usual, this year we combined the SMAC Awards with our friends from SMDAC and packed the room at the Marina Bar. Steve Kelly had once again done a huge amount of work organising the cups, engraving, prizes, venue and food. On top of that he compered the evening with his usual efficiency and humour making it a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

The running order of the night was the SMDAC Awards, then the SMAC Awards and finally after some food to sustain our energy levels, the raffle. Before we got on to the main business we had to catch up with a Fish Of The Month award for Ray Plomer from November. Next item was to hand out all the Angling Trust Specimen Certificates and Medals which covered 13 specimen fish caught by members last season.

The club awards were presented by our good friend Rupert Bremer who has supported SMAC at Premier Marinas since its inception. SMDAC cups and awards cover beach, boat and lake fishing and were presented as follows.

• Mixed Freshwater Lake Cup – Frank Chatfield
• Largest Freshwater Fish – Tony Tadd (Mirror carp, 13lb)
• Silver Fish Species Cup – Frank Chatfield
• Combined Beach and Pier Competition – John Wearn
• George Dominy Trophy – John Wearn
• Best Specimen – John Wearn
• Cod Cup – John Calton
• Species Hunt – Frank Chatfield
• Runner Up Champion – Tony Tadd
• Club Champion – Frank Chatfield

The SMAC awards were then presented by Rupert Bremer as follows:

• Plaice Cup – Dave Newnham (1lb 15oz)
• Bream Cup – Dan Lumsden (3lb 1oz)
• Bass Cup – Steve Tambling (8lb 10oz)
• Cod Cup – Darren Price (7lb 10oz)
• Pollack Cup – Mark Banks (16lb 5oz)
• Best Specimen Turbot or Brill – Dan Lumsden (Brill, 2lb 9oz)
• Turbot or Brill Runner Up – Richard Pack
• Ladies Cup – Soulla Banks
• Junior Cup – Jack Dickson
• Catch & Release Cup – Jock Park (Thornback 15lb)
• Best Specimen – Peter Churchill (Gilthead 3lb 6oz)
• Species Hunt Cup – Peter Churchill (39)
• Ladies Species Hunt – Pam Eckersall (23)
• Junior Species Hunt – Jack Dickson (6)
• Nelson Mandela Cup – John Wearn
• Bream Open, best placed member – Dan Lumsden (2^nd)
• Inter Club Competition – Ray Plomer
• Cod Open, best placed member – Neville Merritt (3^rd)
• Cod Pool, First – Darren Price (7lb 10oz)
• Cod Pool, Second – Neville Merritt (4lb 3oz)
• Bill Arnold Memorial Trophy – Neville Merritt
• Pairs Cup – Steve Tamblin & Dan Lumsden
• Club Champion Runner Up – Steve Tamblin
• Club Champion – Dave Newnham

The Bill Arnold Memorial is awarded in memory of our now departed but very dear friend Bill, to the SMAC member who has made a significant contribution to the running of the club during the year. Unfortunately Bill’s sister Mary was unable to present this in person but we hope to welcome her again in future years.

After pizza and chips we moved on to the raffle. We have one free raffle for members and then a fundraising raffle. In addition to prizes bought by SMAC we were also very grateful for prizes donated by SMDAC and Premier Marinas. The raffle raised £760 towards the cost of the evening, so many thanks to all that contributed.

Congratulations to all the competition, award and prize winners! We have lots to look forward to in the coming year including a new Open Bass Competition plus our regular fixtures of competitions and annual BBQ. All we need now is some warmer weather.

We started our regular monthly meeting with a talk by Steve Thair, Area Manager and Community Advocate for St. John’s Ambulance. He gave us invaluable advice on what should be in our First Aid Kits, how to use the kit for common injuries and also gave us a quick refresher on CPR and the use of a modern defibrillator – all in 45 minutes! There is a more detailed report on his recommendations here .

Then on to regular Club business – although being early March there wasn’t a lot to report. Fish Of The Month was an uncontested Spurdog of 14lb 8oz winning Peter Churchill the medal and a tenner. Peter generously donated his winnings to the RNLI.

It’s very early days for the Club Standings (below) but already we have a neck and neck race for the Species Hunt between John Wearn and Peter Churchill with three species each.

Presentation Night is Saturday 15th March in the Marina Bar. Prizes will be presented from 7:45pm so get there well before then if you want a seat, a free drink and the chance to buy tickets for an amazing raffle. If you haven’t told Steve Kelly you will be attending there won’t be enough food so please let him know. Thank you!

Looking forwards to our Open Bream Competition in May, we have decided to limit entries to Black Bream only. We don’t want a freak Gilthead stealing the show!

Neville reminded members that we can still get involved in citizen science projects which were introduced to us last year at a club meeting by The International Seakeepers Society. Here’s an update we received this week:

• Dr. Christina Hunt’s fish-measuring project Competitive Angling as a Scientific Tool  is active until the end of March, therefore we welcome any participation up until this point. We are in contact with the researchers to discuss whether this timeline can be extended if either yourself or any other members of Southsea Marina Angling Club are keen to participate after this date. We will keep you updated with how this proceeds.
• Seabed 2030 – This UN Ocean Decade Action project aims to map the entire global seafloor by 2030, using small bathymetric data loggers that connect to a vessel’s navigational backbone. By collecting time, GPS and depth measurements through these loggers (provided by SeaKeepers), Citizen Scientists can contribute valuable data to this project with little personal effort, mapping regions where data is currently sparse, non-existent or of poor quality. Coastal seafloor regions in particular are highly variable, thus data collected here can have the greatest impact.
• ORCA OceanWatchers – The ORCA OceanWatchers project encourages vessel users to conduct effort-based sightings surveys to monitor global cetacean (whale, dolphin and porpoise) populations and investigate their distributions, identify hotspots, and better understand the threats they face. Citizen scientists have the unique ability to expand the project’s data collection capacity, empowering all to contribute to meaningful scientific research that drives policy change and safeguards these creatures for future generations.

Neville is signed up to the Seabed 2030 and ORCA projects and has had a data logger fitted on Rebel Runner. In return there was nice gift of freebie swag! If any member wants to participate, please contact Vicky Neild at Seakeepers. Project and contact details here.

Finally, Dan gave us an update on progress with planning the new Bass Open Competition in July. Getting large-scale sponsorship has been challenging so it is likely the competition will be run on similar lines to our other competitions.

Next Event: Presentation Night Saturday 15^th March, Marina Bar from 7pm

Next Meeting: Tuesday 1^st April in the Maraina Bar at 7pm where we may get some unusual entries for FOTM.

The SMAC season ends on 31st January and let’s face it, this time of year isn’t the best (or most comfortable) for fishing. We have traditionally used the next couple of months to introduce some variety and interest in our monthly meetings, and 2025 is no exception.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday 4th February at 7pm in the Marina Bar. After we swiftly cover our usual meeting topics we have the great pleasure of welcoming Steve Dimmer, founder of Portsmouth Marine Training. Steve will be giving us a short talk on troubleshooting diesel engine problems at sea. If you want more extensive training on marine diesel engines, Steve is Chief Instructor at the company and in addition to a number of other boat and shore-based courses, he also runs the RYA Diesel Engine course.

The following month on Tuesday 4th March we have invited Steve Thair, Unit Manager for Alton St. Johns Ambulance and First Responder to talk to us about First Aid at sea. Steve will explain the best ways to treat common injuries sustained while in small boats, and also how to deal with potentially more serious conditions. Steve will include a run-though of what to pack in a basic First Aid kit on board, which we should all have – and keep up to date.

Please come along and support these talks if you can. There’s always something new to learn even if you are familiar with these topics already.

Our January meeting was followed by our annual Curry Night in the Bombay Brasserie upstairs, which was a great incentive to turn out on a freezing night. With less than a month to go before our club season closes, those with prize positions on the Club Standings will be keeping an anxious eye on them. See below for a few surprising changes (mainly because I caught something worth weighing!)

Fish Of The Month was dominated by cod, mostly from the Cod Competition but Darren Price knocked all those down with his pre-competition cod of 7lb 10oz. Congratulations Darren.

We had a quick update on recent competitions: Mandela Cup won by John Wearn and the Cod Open Competition, best-placed Member (me) coming third. These are both written up individually, see links for details.

We had more discussion on the new Bass Open Competition planned for 6^th July. This will be based on length so competitors must use a standard fish rule like the Tronixpro which we gave to members when the new bass regulations were first introduced. We have a number of options including: Competitors have to source and register their own rulers when signing up; we tap up Tronixpro to sponsor the event or we add to cost to the entry fee as a deposit. We will also have to think of the logistics of this if competitors sign up on-line, and we may also have to introduce a distance limitation. For example, 15nm from Langstone Fairway would be easy to check on a plotter, and would cover the Solent, Selsey and marks out to the Overfalls.

Steve suggested we revive our programme of guest speakers for the coming Winter meetings. A talk by a local diver and a talk on engine trouble-shooting at sea were suggested, and these will be followed up by members to see if the people involved would be interested.

The suggestion of purchasing two promotional banners for use at our Club and Open events was suggested and approved. The design will include a QR code for contact details. These will be purchased in time for our Presentation Night on 15^th March.

Finally, Steve passed on responses from our previous questions to Premier. They will consider installing a tender and kayak rack and are also considering a lift/scrub/launch budget price deal for members.

There being no AOB, 12 of us retired upstairs for a good curry, beer and banter. Thanks John for organising.

Next Meeting: Tuesday 4^th February, 7pm in the Marina Bar.

Neville Merritt

“And the winner is…”

It’s hard to create as much drama as the Oscars when announcing the annual Mandela Cup winner but hey, it’s an important milestone in the SMAC calendar. Traditionally fished between Christmas and the New Year as a friendly within the club, we have often had to fish from the marina pontoons when the weather was bad. This year we were blessed with calm conditions even if they were misty and cold too.

We were aiming for the biggest cod but predictably, they didn’t come out to play. 10 anglers in five boats chased whiting as a substitute, “and the winner is….” – wait, you’ve already seen the photo. So much for the big reveal. John Wearn with a whiting of 1lb 1 oz wins him the £25 prize pot, plus of course the actual Mandela Cup at the annual Presentation Night at the end of the season. Congratulations John!

Our monthly meetings are consistently popular with members and we had another full room on Tuesday. Steve ran through the Club Standings as usual which are detailed below. Mark Banks is leading the overall Champions Cup with 6 points and Pete Churchill is romping away on the species hunt with 38 recorded so far.

Fish Of The Month was awarded to Pete Churchill for his Gilthead Bream of 2lb 8oz, the only entry that was officially a specimen. He generously donated his winnings to the RNLI fund.

Our Cod Pool stands at 24 with no entries so far. A pool of £240 means even a small cod could be very valuable!

Our next event will be the Inter-Club Competition, this year hosted by ECA. It will be on 6^th October (now postponed) or on each following Sunday until the weather allows us to fish.

There will be a talk at the ECA on Tracking Sharks and Rays from 6pm to 8pm on Monday 4^th November, all welcome.

The Cod Open Competition will be held on Sunday 17^th November, again rolling forward every Sunday if bad weather prevents us getting out.

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 5^th November at 7pm. The Marina Bar Winter Hours will be in place which means the bar will close at 8pm, so no hanging about. We really need someone with a large boat, central heating and a generous stock of drinks to move to A pontoon to give us somewhere to move on to. Any takers?

Looking forward to next year, our Presentation Night (free food, a free drink, prizes and a very decent raffle) will be on Saturday 29^th March 2025. This is always a brilliant evening so get there early to bag a seat. Last year the room was rammed an hour before it was due to start!

A suggestion for us to consider at the AGM was to hold a Bass Open. Our Open Competitions always attract a lot of visiting anglers to the marina and this would be an good addition. It would be based on length and Catch & Release, although fish can optionally be retained in line with National rules prevailing.

What will the next month bring – the first cod, terrible weather, who knows? Tight Lines anyway, and see you on 5^th November if not before.

We had a very interesting guest talk from The International Seakeepers Society and the University of Portsmouth to start the evening off, and you can read all about it here. We had a great turnout again and our visitors were very appreciative of the interest and support from our members.

On to regular club matters: Steve ran through the current competition standings which are listed below. These can change in an instant, all you need is a good day’s fishing and someone else is in the lead!

Fish Of The Month had a number of entries this time around including some very good fish. The winner is selected based on an unscientific combination of percentage of specimen weight and whether the assembled members think it was a good catch. The winner for September is Pete Churchill with a Gilthead Bream of 3lb 6oz.

We don’t have a date yet for an evening Sole trip, and if anyone has any suggestions for suitable marks without travelling up to Southampton Water please let Dan Lumsden know.

Our next competition will be the Inter Club Competition between SMAC, LHFA and ECA (and Southsea Sea Anglers if they wish). This will be on Sunday 6^th October weather permitting, and hosted by last year’s winner ECA.

The Cod Pool is now open, so please make sure your £10 Cod Pool entries are safely with Steve Kelly before registering a cod catch. You might think this is early, but a cod was caught in Langstone Run at the end of August!

The date for the Cod Open will be agreed at the next meeting. We need to make sure we have enough whiting in the sea to fill the prize places this year.

Club merchandise in the form of burgees, caps and beanies can still be purchased from Steve Kelly while stocks last.

Finally, our hosts for the SMAC/SMDAC Pier Competition, Best of British Food recently organised a Junior event and despite horrendous weather, the kids had a great time with some memorable (for them) catches. Many thanks to the organisers and supporters, particularly Cosham Angling. If anyone has any spare rods and reels, they are collecting them for local children to give those who don’t have the means a chance to take up angling.

Next meeting is on Tuesday 1^st October, 7pm in the Marina Bar as usual.