Fishing Clubs

My local Fishing club (which Iam not going to reveal the location or the name the club) in early April sent a letter to everyone in is a member of our club and inviting anyone to do nightfishing for the first time in it club history. This how the first letter started:

Dear Members

I have been requested to inform you that your re-election to membership for the next season is subject to the payment of the annual subscription by the date, namely 28 days before the start of the season. The subscription statement has been posted to you in good time and your earliest co-operation would be appreciated.

This season night fishing will be introduced from 16th June 2004

There will be two level of subscription.

1 dayime fishing only.

2 daytime and nightime fishing.

Please make your payment accordingly

Yours faithfully

Honourary Treasurer

So I thought about for a few days and went for the night fishing and sent my payments. Went round tackle shops and surf the internet for the mail order for bit and pieces and what next happen?

Yesterday I receive another letter from the same fishing club and this what it read:

Dear Member

Nightfishing

At the last Fishing Club Committee Meeting, the proposed Rules goving night fishing were discussed at lenght. However it was not possible to find an appropriate soloution that would properly and reasonbly allow night fishing to take place. The Committee have, therefore, resolved not to proceed with the night fishing any Member who has already paid his subscription for this opportunity will be reimbursed shortly.

Your sincerly

Deputy Chairman and Secretary

Then I was truly chesse off with that commitee after spending a few hundreds quids on sleeping bed, sleeping bag, cooking equipment and luggage and so on.

Today, My reimbursed came today but only from the different subscription from the dayfishing and the extra for the nightfishing it don't cover my expensive equipment for nightime fishing which I have brought during that time.

Have any other Fishing.magic members have any problem with their Club Committee?

Oh boy am I glad you started this one. Thank you Andrew - Mwa (big kiss - no I'm not like that really)

I'll juts address your problem first and then come back later with a tirade of stuff. The problem you have confronted is the fact that the club have absolutely no respect whatsoever for the ordinary member. They have no idea how to run things at all and as soon as they make one decision, you can bet that some stupid fart will object and trun that decision around leaving you out on a limb. Exactly what has happened here.

The real root cause of this is the work is voluntary, they don't need to earn a wage out of it and so don't take the job seriously enough. If it were their business and they treated their customers like that they would sure as hell lose the business and serve them right.

That's what sometimes happens. Thes kind of people get made redundant, get a few thousand golden handshake and splash out on a tackle shop. But because they haven't a single shred of business acumen they fail and lose it all.

Read my first article in "Running a Club as a Business" and it says repsect the customer. It's no wonder more anglers are going to commercial waters. At least you know where you stand.

Cheeky Monkey, Where is that article " Running a Club as a Business" is under which forum?

right then i'll get my tirade out of the way in the place that it should have been aired.
why is it that you get clubs which are perfectly ok untill they are over taken by one extreme of the sport.
the matchmen instantly ban all nightfishing most baits and sensible tackle and if it's taken over by carpers you can't get a decent peg for love nor money.
inmy opinion match men and out and out specimen hunter carpers should be banned from every comittee in the land.
then you would only have sensible all round anglers who can see both points of view and would be able to find some sort of compromise.
if you don't believe me look at abingdon and oxford anglers aliance.
decent price for a years ticket.
night fishing alowed on the waters where the landowner permits it, the main carp lake being one of those places.
varied river match lengths and good specimen fishing for those that want it.
spot on well done.
i've had the mis fortune to encounter too many match men controled clubs though.

plus it costs an extra hundred quid for a season ticket to the main carp lake to be able to fish it at night so all the silly people go there. that's not where the biggest carp live though.

It's here Andrew

Cheers Cheeky Monkey.

I think what you have to remember here is that the majority of coarse anglers, and indeed coarse angling (historically) generally, is a sport of the lower prolitariate classes, ie generally uneducated participants who are not associated with the rules of committees and organisational abilities, add to this the fact that most of your average anglers don`t want to get involved, in addition to this some committee members have found their niche on a local club offering them some form of higher station in life, a station which they would be unlikely to attain in a paid professional position and of course they have no concept of the resposibility which should go with such positions). Its the local club psychology I`m afraid and the only way to change these things is to get involved and try to guide the less educated into the responsabilities and committment required toi run a fair minded democratic club, its no good criticising from the outside

It can however be an uphill battle and many a good man has given up before he has got started, mainly because of a lack of support from the clubs critics, at the end of the day its all down to , how far are you prepaired to get involved to support fair minded angling, if you simply wish to go fishing, with no political involment, then you have little to complain about, do you?

I think Jeff has said it all in his posting and his series of articles. I hate poliitcs, as do the majority, and just want to go fishing. As Jeff implies to have the clubs properly run may cast a little more if the committee members were to take their work seriously. Personally I would be prepared to pay more for club subscriptions to have the clubs properly run. This is the alternative to getting involved in politics as The Monk thinks we should. Given a choinc between leaving things as they are, getting involved in politics or paying more I would rather pay more. This may go some way to avoiding the kind of thing Andrew experienced. I would be pretty pissed off in Andrew's position, having spent all that money on night gear.

thats not what I said Dave,

what I said was its not reasonable to criticise if you are not prepared to get invoved. Its a bit like calling the Government but never voting!

I dont really think you can compere a fishing club with a business although it would be nice if they were run this way, or certainly as a successful business. Your average angling club is run by volunteers, unpaid, if you have a business you employ only people who can do the job (well thats the theory of it anyway), with an angling club made up of volunteers, well basically you get what you get, and they are not there to provide a service, they are in theory a collective who cares and contributes towards organising local fishing, unfortunately many have no real understanding of the bigger picture (angling) ie a local club can ban boilies, to ban boilies segregates anglers and thus does not help to create unity, which holistically is bad for angling, but locally may (alleged) solve problems within the club membership.

most of the clubs in somerset are run by the minority (match anglers)a few of us speccy\pleasure anglers tried to change the way a local club was being managed,the result?all the matchmen were mates and stuck together when any changes were proposed,it took us years to get sensible pike\carp rules in,and even longer to allow 3 rods.they wont budge on night fishing.the majority of match anglers on the committee never attend work parties and refuse to have bailiff cards.the match secretary was found to be allowing his mates to fish club matches without licences,he resigned over this,but was invited to reapply to be a committee member by the chairman,the end result is that 4 of us resigned along with 6 bailiffs.Now theyve got a secretary that almost got caught illegally transferring fish,hardly any active bailiffs and a chairman so apathetic that he won`t even investigate reports of kids trying to catch swans with tackle.needless to say the club is stagnating and many responsible anglers arent rejoining this year.

I am not a member of my brothers club as I dont live in the area.I do know a bit about it though and there may be some valid reasons for not allowing the night fishing.However the real point here surely is why did the club offer (in fact take money) for night fishing before they had got it sorted out? Ridiculous! I am not a lawyer but their actions ie taking money for something they were not in a position to supply is dubious to say the least.The real point though is what a shoddy way to run a club.Especially one that prides it self on being so exclusive.

What Momk has said is absolutely spot on - I have tried to get them to run the clubs on more business-like lines, but you always run into a problem. That is, there are always some (usually match) anglers who can catch a few fish and they think that this ability gives them the right to dictate the policies of the club.

In fact you find that these are the loudest and most vociferous of committee people, but they never take on the main jobs of administration. That's beyond their abilities, but still these Cro-magnons insist of having it "theire way". Fortunately, you can identify these types pretty quickly by the scratch marks on their knuckles where they dragged them on the ground. )

On a serious point - Dave is right also, why should he want to get involved in the "politics" of the club. If he went to any meetings and suggested something he would probably be shouted down by the aforementioned Cro-magnons. Not because his suggestion would be unatainable, but simply because they can't have "pleasure" anglers dictating the clubs policy.

It sound as if Pete Austin's problems are atypical of many clubs and again I can only suggest that you get a big gang of "common-sense" anglers of like minds together and vote yourselves in and the morons out! But you have to be prepared to roll you sleeves up and get your hands dirty.

What irritates me so much about these sorts is that they cannot see where the future lies for the club. They think it will and should always remain the same, but it will not. Everything either progresses or regresses, nothing stays static.

The Cro-magnons want the club to be successful but don't know where it needs to be. Businesses do 3, 5 10 year plans and know in general what they need to do to achieve that. Japanese companies are looking forward 100 YEARS!! I bet Shimano have the plans drawn up already for the 2012 range of reels and the 2007 range are already in prototype production. That's Japanese thinking for you.

Clubs can't even see forward 6 months let alone next season. Ask them to do a budget (as here ) and they'll look at you with a blank expression. Ask for a cash flow analysis and you are from another planet. But to be really well organised and to take decisions you need these.

More often than not they wet a finger, stick it in the air and guess. A practice that is doomed for failure.

Sorry Momk - I'm suffering the same smelling mithtakes as you gte.

We have three section of the committee.

1 Coarse Fishing Committee.

2 Trout/Game Fishing Committee.

3 General Committee which overrule both of the other two committee.

I belive my club water the general committee members are Trout/Game anglers who will stick together as Pete mention in his post about the matchmen as mates, well it is the same here. When any proposed questions is mention and (in my veiw) they couldn't answers any of the qestions we asked them. It was like that when we have our AGM last November.

I do not have any problems with the trout/game anglers. (In fact sometime do a bit of game fishing elsewhere) Our Coarse fishermen have been campaigning for years to get nightfishing. And it always the same answer "Maybe next year". I now see that as a "Never in a hundred of years".

Our coarse section has always welcome other coarse anglers/trout anglers in open arms, we even run the committee organise fishing matches where the main/overall committee members are supposed to running these matches. (Come to think about it I don't even recalled seeing any of the Committee members at the matches, and probably in the club bar drinking whiskey or gin & tonic!!)

Again I also agree with Budgie mention "their actions, ie taking money something they not in a postion to supply is dubious to say the least. The real point through is what a shoddy way to run a club".

Where do these type of committtee men come from? are they voted on the committtee, or are they co-opted on to the committee? i.e. hand picked.

I belive they were co-opted on to the committee

Say no more Andrew.
He who makes waves does not get co-opted.