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Are you in the club?
by Dave Godwin
 | | My club meets in the Marina Bar |
How many of you sea anglers belong to angling clubs these days?
With the change in policy by the NFSA these numbers may dwindle even more. Angling clubs seem to have gone out of fashion, and I think there are more than a few reasons for this.
Sea anglers are split into various groups - at the best of times - beach, boat, pleasure, match etc and to try and please all these groups and more in any one club would be very difficult. One wonders how much some clubs try.
Times have changed, anglers have changed - certainly the amount of fish there are for us to catch has changed!
However not many angling clubs seem to have changed with the times.
This is not a criticism of any club or any of the hard working committees that run them it is more a reflection of the whole scenario. I also do a fair bit of carp angling, and have attended a few Carp Society meetings and general social events, and I have noticed a distinct difference.
The Carp Society, for instance, arranges regional meetings in different area of the country and there is always one local to your area. They charge a small entry fee (dearer to non-members) and they have a guest speaker and usually a slide show on the chosen subject. The speaker is usually a well-known angler and this becomes a social evening with wives and girlfriends attending as well as a tackle stand from local shops/manufacturers.
The whole environment is different to any other sea-angling club I have belonged to in the past and maybe we could learn some thing from their set up.
 | | Prive-giving. Karen Martin is the Ladies Winner this year. |
I feel sure that with a bit of hard work and perseverance we could generate the same sort of social atmosphere, many anglers are only to willing to learn from one another they just need to be helped in the right direction.
Evening sessions could be set up for rig tying, bait collection and storage. In fact, all the little things that some of us take for granted are a gold mine of information to novice anglers.
Video evenings could be another good idea -fishing of course!
With a couple of videos and a couple of pints with your mates soon becomes a better option than East Enders or Corrie!
 | | Kevin Martin, who won 3rd place in a recent club competition |
The old scenario of monthly committee meetings, annual prize givings, beach matches and boat trips all organised by a committee has to change to survive.
Now I am the first to moan about club members not wanting to do anything and the bulk of the work being done by the hardcore few members, but I feel that we have to try to bring these groups into the 21st century.
I have recently been asked to try to resurrect a dissolved angling club where the member paid £1 per year membership fees, when I spoke to a few of the ex-members they were quite happy to pay £10, which would give any committee plenty of scope to arrange family nights, barbecues, guest speakers, the list is endless.
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