Category: SMAC (Page 1 of 9)

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.

Our next meeting will be at 7pm on Tuesday 3rd September in the Marina Bar. This month we will have an introductory talk from The International Seakeepers Society, a marine conservation organisation that promotes research, conservation and education through the marine leisure community. They are currently recruiting volunteers from local anglers to undertake some research into bass and bream habitats around the Solent on behalf of a research project by the University of Portsmouth. Come along and hear more about it! The talk will be followed by our usual agenda – Fish Of The Month, events, competition standings and possibly some beer and banter too.

On Tuesday 23^rd July it was a calm sunny day, perfect for boat fishing. So we had a pier competition. (Thank you Steve for that line!) Joking aside, we had a really enjoyable afternoon and evening organised by SMDAC who challenged SMAC members to a fishing competition on South Parade Pier. Fishing from 3.30pm to 9pm, 16 members were competing in three categories: most fish caught, most species and heaviest fish.

It turned out that the heaviest fish wasn’t going to be very heavy at all and a moderate bream and a wrasse were both returned before we realized that even a fish the size of a mobile phone would have been in the running.

On the subject of mobile phones, for those not familiar with the pier fishing deck it is surfaced with a grid of very generous spacing so we were all keeping a very tight grip on our possessions, tackle and bait.

Mid evening, Sara from the Best Of British café hailed us for a slap-up meal of burger or sausage and chips of epic proportions, served in individually customised cartons appropriately decorated in sea angling themes.

The species category was fiercely contended by those going for quantity rather than quality. While the latter, inspired by a large bass caught earlier in the day hefted whole squid to the horizon hoping for more than just a few kilos of Solent weed, others were fishing right by the piles with micro hooks and having plenty of fun. Most of us soon listed the obligatory pout and wrasse, but the decider would be who could winkle out something different.

Peter Churchill nailed the species category with five: pouting, corkwing, ballan, pollack and bass. This was in spite of being given angling advice by a casual onlooker who was unaware that Peter is the reigning species king in SMAC. Heaviest fish actually weighed was Steve Kelly’s 6oz ballan wrasse, and most fish caught was 54 also by Steve.

Overall the evening was great fun and our thanks must go to John Wearn and Frank Chatfield of SMDAC for organising such an entertaining evening of fishing, food and plenty of banter.

They talk about stars being aligned but I think the clouds were definitely aligned to miss us on Saturday because we had glorious sunshine for our annual SMAC BBQ. From our vantage point on the BBQ deck (or over the toilets, depending on your point of view) we could see clouds dumping over Goodwood which must have diluted their champagne. However, our beers remained pure and helped wash down the enormous spread of food: procured by Steve, cooked up by Neville and finished off with an enormous pile of fresh scones with jam and cream made by Eleanor.

One of our traditions is to hot-smoke some fresh mackerel. Unfortunately despite lots of feathering from lots of boats we couldn’t produce any in time. Steve nipped off to the fish market so we wouldn’t go short. SMAC buying fish? That’s hard to take but looking at the bill, I’m now a lot less guilty about what I spend on my boat just to catch a few fish for the pot.

We missed our friend Bill but his protege Eleanor and Dan did him proud by extracting £763 from the assembled crowd in true Bill style. As usual we had a free raffle for members then an impressive table of prizes for the main event. Steve compered the comedy act of prize allocation where guests eventually mastered the rules and things went more smoothly. We are also very grateful to those absent members who bought raffle tickets remotely while sipping cocktails in their holiday resorts. It was a sheer coincidence that they won the smallest prizes, honest. At least Dave won’t be short of knives.

Thanks were expressed by all to Steve for doing a serious amount of running around and organising, Tim and Dan for running around shifting things, Eleanor and Dan again for the raffle, Eleanor again for the scones, the cook who just put stuff on the BBQ and everyone who joined on the day in either in person or remotely to make this yet another successful SMAC BBQ.

We are also very grateful to John Wearn for taking lots of photos of the event, a selection of which are in the gallery below.