NEWS AND INFO

JULY 2022

‘Variety is the spice of life’ and that’s never truer than if you’re an angler. So when our local Wimborne club offered us members a ‘Trout Taster Day’ to learn how to catch one, I jumped at the chance to learn about fly fishing and move closer to nature.

Our location was one of the club’s trout lakes just a few minutes drive west of Wimborne at rural Winterborne Zelston, the village’s name identifying the source of the crystal clear chalkstream water that creates the perfect home for the many trout that, as we arrived, encouraged us with their swirls. Watching the cruising fish as they swam in a garden of colourful aquatic weed, it looked very beautiful - and the fish were big!

Our tutor for the day was the renowned guide Mike Bilson. He’s fished all over the world for a wide variety of species, so we were lucky, indeed privileged to receive the best possible advice to help us get started. After essential health and safety instructions, most notably to wear glasses to protect our eyes, he gave us sixteen beginners guidance on the most suitable tackle to use, on how to identify what the trout might be eating, then how to cast the imitation flies to fool the fish.

There’s a bewildering selection of invertebrate life in the lake, from damsel nymphs to cdc's, sedges, upwing olives, daddies, floaters and sinkers but learning the lingo is all part of the fun and some of the great books that were brought along for us to study will impart the knowledge we will need as we develop our skills.

John Goddard was a god of fly fishing during his life and has written a few bibles in his time and of Peter Lapsley’s many books, ’Matching the Hatch’ is one of the most useful.

Mike, and Mike Hirsh our chairman alongside him and our Game Secretary on the right, Paul Baker who organised the gig, said that the most suitable tackle for this lake was a 6wt rod with middle to tip action, a reel with a good clutch loaded with 30yds of backing and a weight forward floating fly line attached to a tapered leader of 9ft. Along with a few flies, this lot will cost you about £100, so it’s not too expensive to get set up and start a lifetime of thrills and if any further help is required, then Paul is always on call, when he's not catching trout!

Once Mike had taught us enough to make it more likely that our casting would result in the fly landing on the water instead of the hedge, we were each promoted to our personal instructor for one to one coaching. The club’s Game Secretary Paul had masterminded the event superbly and had pulled together a large team of volunteers to ensure the day was a success. So when twenty of us ‘students’ arrived in perfect sunshine, we were able to admire an immaculate fishery along with a host of willing guides and their tackle.

Many of the clubs trout fishing stalwarts had given up their day to help us in our faltering steps to become fly anglers and the quality of Mike Bilson’s instructions and our guides was proven by the fact that everyone caught at least one lovely rainbow trout and all were big enough to put a serious bend in our rods. One lucky tyro even caught a monster of eleven pounds! The smiles of triumph from both young and old made it a delightful day for us all.

This is Willam's very first trout. He was very happy of course, as was his grandad Brian Heap, our club President who takes William fishing as often as possible.

My personal guide was Iain Scott, the club’s deputy chairman and we had a really enjoyable couple of hours talking club business while swopping fishing stories as he helped me in trying to fool a fish by tying on a thin 'tippet' of 5lb line. I was keen to catch one on a dry fly because the excitement of seeing the swirl of the take is a top adrenaline rush, but in the end we lowered our sights to a slightly sunken gold head nymph and it was only moments before a surging take tightened the line and battle commenced.

The fish put up substantial resistance and was big enough to not only provide my wife Sue and I with two substantial meals but the crystal clear water and rich fly life of the lake ensured it was very tasty. So if you want to try tasting trout, buy your club day ticket costing £20 and you’ll have hours of fun and with luck, take home two big fish and enough delicious meals for a week.

For over six years Stuart Hitchman has been of great service to WDAC as its Club Secretary. In addition to this job, Stuart has also been a driving force for Club initiatives related largely to the improvement of the Club’s waters at Kingsbridge, Edmondsham and, in conjunction with the then Poole Borough Council, at Creekmoor. He has forged links with the Angling Trust and also with other more local bodies. He has supported many initiatives related to helping the less able. Stu is one of those people who is inclined to bite off more than he can chew and is not afraid to multi-task in many directions. He was described to me once by no less a person than Shaun Leonard ‘as a force of nature.’

The good news is that Stuart is still going to be on the Club’s Committee and will, when time permits, roll his sleeves up and get stuck in. However, Stuart is a Trustee of a charity, as some of you may know, and has recently concluded that he must give that work more time. In consequence he has decided that he can no longer carry on with the Club Secretary role and resigned from it at the May Committee meeting. He will end his work in this respect in September.

THE CLUB THEREFORE HAS A VACANCY FOR THE POST OF CLUB SECRETARY.

There is a job description which identifies that the job purpose is:

“To be the key administrator for the Club except in relation to Memberships [which is the responsibility of the Membership Secretary].  To ensure that the Chairman, the Committee and the wider Membership, as appropriate, are appraised of matters that may affect the Club’s operations and to co-ordinate matters in this context. To be the keeper of the Club’s records. To be aware that the Club is run for the benefit of its Members and to be mindful of the Club obligations in its social, community and legal framework.”

The key roles of the Secretary are to administer the affairs of the Club on a day-to-day basis and be the keeper of the Club’s records and ensure that these are kept in a fit condition to hand on to any incoming new Secretary over time. It is also to gather and provide Club related information for Officers and Members of the Club Committee and the wider Membership and in this respect work with the Club’s Media Officer.

This post, as you would expect, is also responsible for the agendas and the taking and writing up of the minutes of meetings of the Club’s Committee and the Annual General Meeting of the Club and any other ad hoc special Club meetings. The Secretary needs to attend monthly meetings of the Committee, which are on the first Tuesday of each month and the meetings are currently held in the British Legion at Corfe Mullen starting at 19.30.  Of course, this work is not done in a vacuum, normally Stu circulates a draft agenda to me having sought items from the Committee, and there are, as you would expect, standing items on matters of membership numbers and finance.  After meetings draft minutes are agreed by me and then circulated by this post holder.

So what sort of person would fit the post? Organisational ability is important, and the post holder has to be a good communicator and a team player.  The person concerned needs good skills with Microsoft Office and in particular Word and PowerPoint. The successful applicant will be expected to have their own computer and printer (but can claim expenses stationery and related consumables). There is a light but steady stream of emails to the Secretary’s inbox, as you would expect, and these need to be either dealt with directly or forwarded to the relevant Committee Officer.

It is also preferable that the post is filled by somebody who is a fisherman!

The post has evolved with Stuart to include being the  officer to apply for Angling Trust grants and also for cormorant control licences and there are some other similar tasks.

Like all the other Club Officer positions, there is no pay for the role, but the post is provided with free membership retrospectively twelve months in arrears; for the work done.

As an executive member of the Club’s Management Team, it does provide an opportunity to become one of the key members moving the Club forward and as an ‘outward looking’ Club officer the post is also central to non-routine decision making. There is a key role in conjunction with others in keeping the Club’s constitution under review and to also to hold the master copy of the Membership book and to play an executive role in ensuring its publication.

It would be good to see the new postholder appointed quickly with Stuart able to provide a supervisory handover role. As Stuart is staying on the Committee, he will be around to help whatever happens and of course I will help too.

If you are interested in the post a copy of the job description will be provided on application by email to the Club Secretary at

secretary@wimborneanddistrictanglingclub.co.uk .

If you have any questions about the post Stuart and I will do our best to answer them, but for consistency again please use this mail address.

I find and I am sure Stuart will also say that it is a privilege working for the Club and whilst on occasions it is challenging, it is also really interesting and often provides a real sense of achievement.

Come on, write that email and become a key player in the Club’s management!

Mike Hirsh

The club's committee has continued this year's promise to improve our waters, with another batch of pristine fish delivered last month.

A total of 149 carp weighing a total of 1188lbs were introduced, with the breakdown as follows:

Pinnock:

53 Carp 3-6lb total Wt 254lb

36 Carp 7-10lb total Wt 328lb

Total weight: 582lb

Kingsbridge

21 Carp 10-12lb into Wellington

39 Carp 6-10lb into Widgeon

Total weight 606lb

Our lakes and river stretches provide our club members with places of sanctuary, peace and time to kick back and unwind. We’ve touched on fish care and specific club rules and guidelines numerous times, we’ve not however spoken too much about how what we do affects others.

If you were to ask any angler their biggest bugbear whilst fishing, it would fair to say that noise would top the polls for most. Fishing is often described as a form of meditation – a single point of focus to quieten the mind and escape the usual trails and tribulations of day-to-day life. Makes sense when you look closer at the health benefits of fishing and the time spent by the water, observing mother nature at her finest.

Unnecessary noise is therefore an annoyance that most of us would prefer to avoid at all costs. This can come in many forms, from trying to anchor banksticks or bivvy pegs into soil as hard as concrete, bite alarms that are on full volume for the duration, through to heavy walking past marginal spots that are being fished. If all of us took a little more time to think about how our actions affected others, each and every one of us would benefit from a quieter and more respectful environment.

The next one would likely be water allocation, in terms of which swims cover which expanses of water. Most are pretty obvious, a few maybe not so. If we are going to set up in a peg that’s next door to one already occupied, the least we can do is to have a quick chinwag with said angler and ascertain the boundaries before casting a line. It’s incredibly frustrating to have someone rock up and cast straight over your lines without so much as a courtesy check beforehand. Yes some unsavoury individuals will respond with less courtesy than you’ve shown by doing this, most however will be grateful for the gesture.

This leads onto bait boats. Whilst the Club are currently happy to permit their use, it’s very easy to encroach onto areas of the lake that you wouldn’t have been able to cast to that are perhaps ‘owned’ by an adjacent swim. Used correctly and courteously, they can be big advantage and can be preferable to a bombardment of spods and spombs, especially for the reduction in decibel levels.

There are of course many more, some of which may include:

• Uber-bright head torches beamed across a dark lake

• Badgering folks for their session update or catch reports

• A heavy-footed silhouette-bearing approach an angler who may have a bait right in under their feet

• Piling in unused bait at the end of a session. No one minds a handful of corn or a few maggots going in. Bucket of pellets or particle disposed of this way though isn’t helpful and should be taken home

• Litter. The less said about this the better. And it comes under rules really, more so than general etiquette.

Anyway, the point is we can all improve our membership experience by thinking about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. Club waters are generally a better experience than day-ticket venues, we can however elevate them further by respecting and considering each other as much as we consider our own sessions.

To begin with the 2021 season was a bit of a damp squib as the first 10 months of the yearly series was delayed due to covid, not being able to match fish and the weather always on a Sunday was nt favourable for a match on the river, however we did manage to have 3 matches during Nov/Dec 2021. This also included an invitation to Sturminster & Hinton AA, which saw 20 anglers fish the Baileys stretch at Canford Magna. Earlier in the year the WDAC river anglers were invited to fish the Stour on a S&HAA water and it is hoped that this will be an annual event between the two clubs.  The weather was not particularly kind towards our planned match dates and saw most dates cancelled or rescheduled, in the end only 3 matches took place.

A nice brace of perch for Brian Heap and John Wilkinson on one of our matches in late November 2021.

Match 1 - Jan 9th 2022

The 2022 river series got underway on Jan 9th 2022. The opening match for the new series was a difficult and hard match. A very bright day with a slow moving river made it hard to catch a decent bag of fish. Steve Chipchase took the honours with a bag of mainly roach.

1st Steve Chipchase 3lb 2oz

2nd John Reid  0lb 15oz

=3rd Mick Jepson  0lb 12oz

=3rd Brian Heap  0lb 12oz

Match 2 - Jan 23rd 2022

1st Keith Rumball  7lb 2oz

2nd Mick Cullen  5lb 1oz

3rd John Reid  5lb 0oz

A nice net of perch taken down the edge for Keith giving him 1st place overall.

Match 3 - Feb 6th 2022

A very hard match which had a couple of anglers not catching. The winning bag from  John Reid consisted of mainly bleak for a win. The river again was slow moving and even more clearer than the previous 2 matches.

1st John Reid  4lb 8oz

2nd Brian Heap  1lb 9oz

3rd Mick Cullen  1lb 4oz

Match 4 - Feb 27th 2022

This match was delayed by a week due to the high winds of storm Eunice. However the previous storm, Dudley, brought some extra water in the river and a better colour for the fish to wake up and be caught. Keith Rumball had a very nice net of roach for the win. A couple of anglers also had some nice roach to the 1lb mark in the nets as well.

1st Keith Rumball  9lb 4oz

2nd Brian Heap  7lb 6oz

3rd John Reid  3lb 4oz

Match 5 – Mar 6th 2022

The last match on the river before the close season began. The conditions for fishing had improved with an upstream wind and a nice colour to the river. 7 anglers fished and the weights varied form 2lb to 18lb with some quality roach showing throughout.

1st Brain Heap 18lb 8oz

2nd Mick  Jepson 8lb 14oz

3rd Alan Johansen 7lb 4oz

1st  Brian Heap 18lb 8oz

2nd  Mick Jepson 8lb 14oz

The matches on the river will resume with match 6 on Sunday October 9th running through until the beginning of December. See the 2022 membership book or online for dates and contact numbers for booking in prior to the match.

Last year we had an invitation from Sturminster Newton and Hinton AA to fish their stretch of the Stour in July above Stur Newton and WDAC reciprocated this with an invite to fish the Baileys stretch of the Stour in Sept 2021. It is hoped that the same can be done in 2022.

A new addition to the Baileys section will be the Beaumont Cup which will be held on Nov 6th which will see teams from WDAC, Ringwood and Wareham fish the whole section from the boathouse up to Dream Boats.

Given it looks like we’re in for a prolonged spell of hot weather - worth a recap on a few things;

- please ensure you are hydrated and have sensible clothing and sunscreen. Heat stroke is a very real possibility in these temps

- to our younger members - don’t be tempted to jump in to cool off. All water can be dangerous but when there is hidden weed, unexpected depths and silt it is particularly dangerous.

- please report any fires immediately. Members are reminded fires and BBQ’s are banned.

- keep your landing net and mat cool or submerged. They’ll get red hot in the sun and risk damaging fish quite severely. If your mat has been in the sun all day, it’ll take a minute or so to cool off in the margins once your fish is netted.

- ensure fish are returned to the water carefully and slowly. Wait for the fish to recover fully and to swim off of its own accord. This is especially important in running water - holding the fish facing upstream will wash oxygen through the gills and allow the fish to swim off safely. Barbel especially require longer to recover in the hot weather if you're fortunate enough to land one.

- retainer slings in marginal shallow water isn’t fish friendly when the water temps are right up. Please remember than plant life absorbs oxygen during the hours of darkness (producing it in daylight) Please photo your fish in darkness and return to the water ASAP. A safe fish is more important than a higher quality morning photo.

-Keepnet use should be limited, especially during the hottest part of the day

Please look after yourselves and our underwater friends!