I guess it was my idea but the seed may have been planted in my head during phone conversations between Ron Clay and myself.
It might have grown out of the Fishing Magic trip to the Idle.
It was certainly bursting forth when Matt, Tim and I fished for tench a couple of months back.
Or it might have been that I received some excellent feedback from a few guys when pulling together my Barbel Society talks last year.
Thing is, I knew most everyone as a result of this site, or I'd fished with them in the past. We all lived more or less in the same area and we tended to fish some of the same waters. They were also the kind of guys you could spend an evening down the pub with and talk fishing to your hearts content.
It wasn't a case of show us your PB list or who the hell are you, it was a case of this bunch of keen anglers with widely varying backgrounds, experiences and ages who I thought might get on. So I emailed them, explained what I intended to create and invited them along to a local pub.
There are no fees, no bages of office (though we felt it would be nice to make Ron our president and Swordsey the cook!), no desire to steal waters from other anglers for our exclusive use, no membership tickets, no political agendas, no desire to grow. I just hoped I could merge the enthusiasm and ideas of a great bunch of guys who then became good friends.
We've taken one step on a long journey so far and it seems to be working fine. We generally keep each other informed through emails and Matt has just launched our own web site forum (restricted access) so we can leave messages for each other.
It's not rocket science, in fact it is dead easy to creat your own group. You should try it.