BODSA Blog

A big thankyou to those members who took the trouble to attend the AGM on 21st February. We had some lively debate on several topics ranging from spinning rules to growing the membership. Details and outcomes from some of the discussions are summarised in the latest Member Notice. These include some rule changes and members MUST take time to familiarise themselves with these. We hope to see many more of you at the next AGM - it's your chance to tell the Committee what we can do to improve the operation of the Club and our fishing.

A reminder to all members that our AGM will be held on 21st February at the the Village Hall behind St Dunawd's Church, beginning at 7pm. The minutes of last year's AGM are available,in the document library.

Also, if you haven't already renewed your membership for 2025, remember to do it before 1st March, otherwise you will have to pay the £10 joining fee. AND REMEMBER TO CHECK YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS HELD IN CLUBMATE IS CORRECT.

The current ban on net fishing for salmon and sea trout in the Dee and Clwyd estuaries expires in June this year. NRW have commenced a public consultation on their proposals to extend the ban permanently. We encourage all anglers to support the proposals via the Consultations section of the NRW website. The consultation ends on 12th March. BODSAA members can see a copy of the proposals in our document library.

Be aware that the farmer has erected an electric fence on the access to Rodens car park because he currently has sheep grazing in one of his fields. Please take care if approaching or attempting to cross the fence.

It was good to see one of our members had a great end to the salmon season, with a seven pounder from Groves Farm. Our Treasurer is very jealous - his only contact with a salmon this year lasted just 2 minutes before it slipped the hook!

Our Membership Secretary, Richard, has had a cracking start to November with 2 enormous chub. This photo is the SMALLER of them, at about five pounds!

If any of you are fortunate enough to catch a notable fish in future we would be pleased to hear about it. Just let us know via the "Contact Us" button.

We believe the council have now completed their resurfacing of the lane to Pickhill, so members should be able to access the beat as normal.

We have just found out that the main lane leading to our Pickhill beat has been temporarily closed for resurfacing by the Council. It may be possible to access via the smaller lane which joins the main lane close to our gate but we are uncertain. When we know the lane is fully open we will announce via the Blog.

As you can see, the launch of our redesigned website has now taken place. All the content from our old website has been retained, including blog posts, notices and forum discussions. There are also a couple of new additions; an interactive map showing coordinates of gates and car parks for all our beats and a Library which we will gradually populate with publications from NRW, Grayling Society, etc. Please note that we were unable to migrate bookings already made for Groves Farm, so if you had already made a booking please renew it.

For the last couple of months we have been working with a software company to redesign our website. This was necessary because the IT platform on which the current website was built is no longer being supported (think of it as trying to run modern software on an obsolete version of Windows). The switch to the new website will take place on Wednesday 11th September. The Internet address will remain the same and your existing user name and  password will allow you to log onto the members area. If you run into any problems just let us know via the "Contact Us" button.

It was great to see a good turnout for today's (31 August) work party. A big thank you to Mike Barker, Steve  Murphy, Andrew Overend, Andy Davies and Graham Alexander. Together with Matt driving "the beast", our massive self-propelled brushcutter, they cleared a path the full length of Dones Meadow and the Chicken  Sheds, as well as opening up half a dozen get-in points. A really productive day's work, for which anyone fishing these beats in the coming months should be grateful.

All MEMBERS PLEASE NOTE THAT THE GRAIG LANE CAR PARK IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Also, please see the  Members Forum request from our River Manager,  Matt Klimaszewski, for volunteers for a work party on Saturday 31st August. We have only had 3 volunteers IN TOTAL from the membership for the last 4 work parties, which is shameful.   ( Andy and Pete - thanks again for your efforts at the last 2 events) Please remember that Matt is not a paid employee! He pays his subscription and gives his time voluntarily,.just like the rest of the Committee, and he needs your support. If not for his sterling work strimming and pruning every week most of our banks would be totally inaccessible by now.  Please don't offer the lame excuse "I joined the Club to fish not to work" - so did we all, including Matt. But without the work there will be no fishing! 

We have scheduled another work party for 11th August, this time on a Sunday for the benefit of those members who are unavailable on Saturdays.

Please see the Forum for details of time and location. We hope that this time we will have better support from the membership. The last event attracted NO VOLUNTEERS beyond the Committee and the previous event only one volunteer. If you want to avoid our banks becoming impenetrable jungle then come and help us at least once. We don't need huge numbers each time, just half a dozen people willing to do put in a couple of hours work.