Honiton SAC

Honiton Sea Angling Club

(help for new members/mini newsletter) 

A warm welcome to you and thank you for joining the club.  This simple newsletter is to give you some information on the club and explain how we run our various events through the year and what we get up to from time to time.

The club was formed in September 1993 and the first meeting was held at the Three Tuns pub in Honiton.  Membership has always been from day one around fifty to sixty, not too big and not too small for a club.  We would like to encourage as many of our members as possible to join the National Federation of Sea Anglers (NFSA)  All sea anglers need to be under one umbrella and lots of problems will be facing us in the coming years, with the Government taking more notice of us now.  If you would like us to enrol you to the NFSA please let us know and we will do all the paper work for you if you wish.

So what do you get for your membership from Honiton SAC ?.  First of all £3 of your money gets sent straight to the NFSA/AT, this being in the rules laid down by them and you could call it a levy towards their running costs.  If you do join as a full NFSA/AT member we then do not have to pay that £3 levy for you as this will be paid direct in your NFSA/AT full membership.  Next we take another £3 and put it towards a third party insurance (£5 Million) that we take out for all our club members whilst fishing in any club organised events.  Next we take another £4 and put it towards any inter club events/competitions we are entered into through the year.  At present we take part in around half a dozen of these interclub events and this part of your entry will go towards helping these events take place each year.  That leaves us with around £5 of your subs left to run the club on and we try to send out a newsletter to you all each month, by post or e mail.  We also have to do all the engraving and produce certificates each year for all of you winning awards through the year with the club.  On top of all that, if you are lucky enough to catch any specimen fish we will also purchase your NFSA/AT specimen medals for you too.

The monthly meetings are held at the British Legion on the third Thursday each month and these meetings are open to everybody and any new members are welcome to attend.  We do not hold any special meetings, all our meetings are open to you all.  We would normally have around twenty turn up to every meeting, which starts at 8pm.   We have a report from all the officers of the club and then end up with a chat on fishing and then a small raffle.   I would like to point out that many a new angler has learnt a lot at these meetings.

We hold all our competitions on specimen fishing only (we do not use any heaviest bag fishing).  Our monthly shore events are fished to aggregate specimen where-by you can weigh-in two fish of each species.  At the end of the year we take your ten best scores and total them up for the winner over the year.  The boat events are booked by members themselves from various ports locally,  here they weigh in single fish as and when they like through the year, then again at the end of the year we total up their best twelve fish for a total.  This again we find works well because once you have weighed in some fish to start with you know what you have to record to better these fish in your total of twelve over the year.  We also have running at present a summer and winter series for the boat events too.

We try to encourage as many members as possible to keep fish alive for weighing and then return them to the water.  If you are lucky enough to catch a good fish and have a decent set of scales * and a camera phone why not weigh it and take a picture of it and then let us know.  (* we would need to calibrate you scales if used with our set) and it would always help to have your fishing buddy witness it if possible.

We also have an active casting section in the club with two members at present in the England team and one of them is the England Manager.  We would normally have two open competitions through the year and we also have casting teach-ins on Wednesday nights from April till September.  If you want to improve your casting please come along, the casting record for the club now stands at around 290 yards !!!.

The junior section has around ten paid up members and they have separate shore competitions through the year.  These events are usually held on local beaches and last around three or four hours.  We run their competitions slightly different from the senior event.  We are currently trying a measure and return system (points per species and points per cm) as this way all fish can be returned to the water.  I think if we can get this system running smoothly and hitch free it could be something to look at in the future for our other events.

All fish must go through our fish recorder whose name can be found in your handbook and fish entries must reach him in seven days.  Fish caught in any club competitions will already be recorded at the event weigh-in on the day.  The club is also running a fish of the month competition each month for senior and junior members and all entries again to the fish recorder.  The club has numerous awards for fish that are caught each year and these are normally presented at the club Presentation Night which is held in March / April.

Mike Spiller (01404 43397) or check it out on www.honitonsac.co.uk