May 2014......................Golden Maggot Time Again

A fairly quiet month on the SENPAC fishing front with most members fishing for anything that swims other than pike, with varying degrees of success. Our May fishing social at the local Whittle Dean complex turned out to be a bit of a struggle with a bright sunny day coupled with a stiff breeze on the exposed water conspiring to make catching fish less than easy. Most of us got the odd fish or two but I suspect that most of us weren't too disappointed when it was over and we could go home and tend to our sunburn!

With relatively few fishing reports received from our members and even fewer images available our Newsletter editor took the opportunity to turn his attention to next season's pike fishing and more specifically to SENPAC's club trips for the coming season. He provided a brief resume of last season's outings and each of the six different venues that we visited by way of prodding everybody to start and consider which waters we should visit in 2014/2015.This showed that two of the venues failed to produce any fish and that a total of 25 fish were caught from the remaining four venues. Best fish caught was Dave Greally's 23lb'er with Dave Gardner's 17lb fish being the only other double caught on the club outings.

Not one of our better seasons then and this is bound to fuel an animated discussion over the next few club meetings as we try to agree the list of waters that we will be visiting next season. We always plan to have both the venues and the dates for the outings agreed in time to include the details in our September Newsletter so that everybody can organise their diaries.............so let "battle" commence!

 Chris Graham with a nice tench from a local pond

Speaking of "battles", June will see the SENPAC stalwarts fishing the Golden Maggot match on the 8th of the month when many of our number who are comfortable with 15lb mono and size 8 hook traces will be faced with the daunting challenge of 2lb hook links and size 18 hook eyes to overcome. Those of us "of a certain age" will no doubt struggle but as fishing socials go this will, as usual, be one of the most enjoyable of the SENPAC summer.

Next club meeting, Tuesday 24th June 2014 at the Northumbrian Piper.

April 2014...................SENPAC goes global

As the Summer fishing begins to take hold with SENPAC members and the pike fishing begins to take second place, our Newsletter editor took the opportunity to record the growing success of the SENPAC blog this month as well as the usual review of the now varied fishing activity amongst the club members.

 Firstly the blog, which continues to enjoy an ever growing number of visitors and perhaps surprisingly the majority of which come from outside of the UK. The details make interesting reading.................37% are UK based, a further 25% come from America, 7% from Russia and 4% from Germany with the remainder fairly equally shared between France, the Netherlands,Sweden,Ukraine, Romania and South Korea!
As you can probably imagine this all came as something of a surprise to our club members, a shared interest in pike fishing is obviously spread far and wide.

That's how you do it Dad...........

On the fishing front, our April fishing social failed to produce any fish to those present but was none the less enjoyable, a duck of the tufted variety providing the only excitement for one of our number?

Like Father, Like Son!

Also reported, a new pb perch of 2lb-3oz for Dave Gardner whilst on a weeks trip to White Acres, good bags of carp, silvers and some early season tench for Paul Proctor fishing one of the local fishing clubs ponds and a reality check for Dave Greally who was comprehensively out fished by Daughter Faye on one trip. What is it with lady anglers?

Dave saved face to some degree later in the month, this time fishing with Son Aaron up in Scotland when they enjoyed one of those remarkable piking coincidences that occasionally crop up, by catching a somewhat elderly fish of 20lb-2oz which was immediately  identified as Aaron's current pb caught eight months previous in the same swim at a weight of 19lb-13oz. You couldn't make it up?

Looking forward to our May fishing and I suspect that once again our members will be spread far and wide chasing various quarry. Our fishing social for the month will take place on the 18th May when we are off to Northumbrian Water's Whittle Dean complex in the hope that in addition to being sociable we may also enjoy catching a fish or two! Tight lines to all.