KDAA Newsletter 2024

Kelvedon & DAA News

Gate codes

The membership card for the next season will show a new combination lock number as well as the old number.

Membership deadlines

Memberships open 12th February

Night Permit deadline 16th March

Current membership cards expire 31st March.

AGM news and rule changes

The AGM held at Spring Lodge Community Centre. Witham on the Monday 8th January with 23 members attending. The following recommendations by the Committee to change the rules were discussed and agreed.

1. Subscriptions to remain the same.
2. Constitution and Rule Changes:

i) Constitution para 3 a) becomes “Membership of the KDAA shall be limited to a maximum number of fee paying members. The membership limit to be that which provides the financial income level set by the Committee. The membership categories shall be Adult, Husband/Wife, Intermediate (16 to under 18), Junior (12 to under 16), Child (Under 12 Subscription free), Senior Citizen (65 and over) and Disabled (Proof of disabled status to be provided). Members must state their date of birth when paying their subscriptions. Under 12 year olds must be accompanied by a responsible adult, fish with a single float or feeder rod and may not fish at night.”

ii) Constitution para 3 b) becomes  “Night fishing permits will be required to fish waters where night fishing is allowed and will be issued up to a limit and received by a deadline set by the Committee. The fee for the permit is in addition to the normal subscription. Night fishing is between 10pm and 5am. Night permit upgrades can only be made through the Membership Secretary and within that limit”.

iii) Constitution para 4 becomes “Subscriptions. Annual membership subscriptions become due on the 1st April. The coarse fishing season on the Association’s still waters, except where specified in the handbook, commences on the 1st April and closes on the 31st March in the following year. The coarse fishing season on the Association’s rivers commences on the 16th June and closes on the 14th March.”

iv) Constitution para 8  General Committee Composition. To be amend the reference to ‘nine other members being elected in groups of three’ to ‘twelve members in groups of four ‘.

v) Constitution para 10 The duty “To review the KDAA subscription rates and agree them for the following membership year.” to be transferred from the AGM to the General Committee.

All Officers and existing Committee members were re-elected. Gary Port was elected to fill a vacancy on the Committee. There are three vacancies on the Committee which may be filled by Committee co-option during the year.

Last October, Chris Lee, our Treasurer for 25 years resigned for personal reasons and was replaced by Kevin Sims.  The Committee much appreciated Chris keeping our finances in good order and his financial guidance over that time.

Joining arrangements for the new season

The Membership will open at 8am on the 12th February 2024 for current, new and prior current season members, however,  new and prior season members requiring a Night Permit will need to wait until 8am on Sunday 17th March 2024.

Existing members wishing to purchase a night permit will have to rejoin by Saturday 16th March when the night permits will then become available for new and prior current season members, if the limit has not been met. 

The Committee decided to sign up with Clubmate to manage our membership applications in 2024/25.  More details in the following Membership Secretary’s Report.

Fishery Manager’s Report

We have continued a programme of improving the infrastructure of our waters.  Owing to the type of work to be done on our waters we have continued to employ contractors and tree surgeons.  A  number of Work Parties were held but these were only mainly attended by Committee members. Only a few ordinary members turned up despite widespread advertising of the events and being held during weekdays and on a Saturday. Looking ahead to more frequent heat waves, the club has also purchased a mobile solar powered Oxygenator.

Seabrooks Reservoir

Following the major improvements to the car park, track and tree clearance in the past two years, we have had two working parties to cut back the saplings that have grown up since then.

We introduced a stocking of additional Mirror Carp in early November—twenty C4s of between ten and fourteen pounds.

We were wrongly informed that Seabrooks Farm would not be extracting water to grow potatoes last year.  As members are aware water started to be extracted in July and finished in September.  Since then, water has been pumped back in and together with the heavy rainfall last autumn the water reached its maximum level at the beginning of December. During periods of hot weather, water depth and oxygen levels were checked.

Seabrooks Farm has continued to use the area around the Reservoir for clay pigeon shooting events on various mornings including Saturdays. This means the venue cannot be used for part of the morning and is closed for fishing. Unfortunately, we have very little influence on the choice of dates although George Seabrook is trying not to arrange events more than once a month. The club will give as much notice of the partial closures as soon as we are provided with the dates.

Silver End Pits

Improvements to Silver End Pits  track and the rear car park was undertaken in February 2023 courtesy of the housing developer Croudace. Siltex was applied to part of the Front Pit in January 2023 to counter the impact of willow leaf fall. A further part of the Front Pit will be treated in 2024. We have also stocked Silver End Back Pit in early November with additional Mirror Carp – five C4s and ten C6s up to 24 pounds There have been good catches of the mirror carp stocked in the Front Pit in 2019 an 2022 and many 30lb plus carp from the Back Pit.

Layer Marney Reservoirs

In July, work was undertaken at the Layer Marney complex to improve access and build new swims on Marney 1. Repairs to platforms on Marney 2 and 3.

The farmer levelled the track all the way to the bottom car park making access much easier. However, by December the track was again showing potholes. Notwithstanding that, the Committee has had to introduce a new Fishery Rule to drive quietly, no speeding on the track and be aware of children, horses and dogs. 5mph speed limit.

Essential tree work was carried by our contractor in October to provide wind tunnels to Layer Marney 3 and to cut back trees on the island.

The club introduced at the beginning of November additional Mirror Carp into Marney 1 – five C4s from nine pounds to twelve and ten C3s averaging about eight pounds each and into Marney 2, –  twenty-two C3, averaging about 6 pounds each, with a few at eight pounds

Pennett’s Farm Reservoir

A work party was held in March to cut back trees and open up swims.

Elm Farm Reservoir

Elm Farm Reservoir was closed for one day in June for tree surgeons to remove a fallen tree. .A platform was rebuilt.

Shemmings Pond

Work is scheduled for the 16/17 January for a contractor to use a digger boat to remove most of the lilies. Also to cut back trees and to recreate bankside swims.

Best wishes and tight lines

Bob Reed

Fishery Manager

Supplementary feeding

We are continuing to supplementary feed high quality pellets to boost the weights of the recently stocked carp in Silver End Pits, Seabrooks and Layer Marney.  Please contact Chris Parrish to purchase bags of these pellets at a good price.

We wish to continue to monitor the weights of the carp in particular the C4 and C6 mirror carp stocked in the past four years. May we ask anglers to submit catch reports for these carp on our website or if you do wish not to publicise your catch please email your catch report

S Mason Open

Seabrooks Resevoir

1^st Troy Doherty           61lb 10oz

2^nd Danny Mason         61lb 2oz

3^rd Gus Lee                  23lb 12oz

 M Joslin Open

Layer Marney 2 & 3

1^st  Rob Houlding            58lb 8oz

2^nd Julian Collop             57lb 10oz

3^rd   Mark Wheeler          57lb 6oz

 Club  Match

Silver End Front Silvers only

1st     Adam Brett    15lb 4oz

2nd    Jamie Derry   13lb 0oz

3rd     Paul Lewis    10lb 8oz

Match man of the Year

 Joint 1^st   Allan Luetchford and Jamie Derry     8pt

Lastly, the KDAA match section is a sociable friendly group of anglers that enjoy the company and good humoured banter that goes with the not too serious competition, if you would like to join us for a match feel free to contact me.

Tight Lines for 2024

Derek Harper

Match Secretary

Head Bailiff’s report

It has been another good year for the club with a large number of members using our waters. I am delighted to say that we have very few incidents of rule breaking or unsocial behaviour. Long may that continue.

All our bailiffs are not only there to check that members are keeping to the rules but are there to help you with any queries, so please talk to them for advice or if you have any concerns and enjoy your fishing

Tight Lines

Bob Reed

Head Bailiff

Treasurer’s Report year end 31 December 2023

Firstly as the new KDAA treasurer on behalf of the club we would like to give our sincere gratitude to our previous treasurer Chris Lee for his dedication and professionalism in the role for the past 25 years.

Our revenue from subscriptions is staying very strong as fishing continues to enjoy a sustained period of popularity. As a result we posted a net surplus for the year ending 31/12/23 despite maintaining our spending on fishery management (£17k) and fish stocking (£14k).

The club has a healthy balance sheet and we intend to ensure that we always maintain at least two years coverage of fixed expenses.

The budget for 2024 includes additional funds for fishery management and further stocking.

Kevin Sims

Treasurer

KDAA website

I hope members find our website that was newly developed at the beginning of last year informative. Members are reminded that it has a Catch Report form for members to submit their photos for the Gallery. We would encourage members to do so in addition to posting them to our Facebook page. It would be good to build up a Gallery of fish from all our waters and all species in addition to carp. 

The website also has a Sell or Buy page and we would encourage members to make use of that.

Fred Merrin

Membership and Publicity

Communicating with members

In addition to keeping our Facebook and Website News page up to date,  I send out regular emails with the latest news affecting our fishing venues and membership. I believe we are the only local fishing club that keep members up to date in this way. Last year 54 emails were sent out.  Unfortunately, it seems according to the email server statistics about 35% of members do not open their emails to read. Hopefully, they do not end up in ‘junk’ folders, Only 35 members had not provided an email address.

Angling Coaching Initiative

The Coaching Initiative is now in seventh year and is run as a volunteer non-profit making umbrella organisation involving five local fishing clubs.

Just to remind you the Initiative is to recruit youngsters aged 8 –16 and their non-fishing parents and offer coaching sessions, so newcomers learn how to fish and existing junior anglers can develop their skills e.g. waggler and feeder. It is our contribution to help address the significant decline in youngsters taking up the sport  and although we may not see any immediate benefit to our clubs in terms of membership numbers it is very much about taking a long term view.

Twenty sessions were held on nine different club waters between the 20 May and the 31 September. Over 226 places were filled last year.

Feedback highlights the Initiative is viewed as well organised, enjoyable, instructive and value for money.

We have found from the start of the Initiative the major limiting factor has been the lack of Voluntary Coaches from

the clubs, although this improved slightly last year after a recruitment drive which we will need to repeat again this year.

To make it more successful we need more coaches. With a larger pool of coaches we will be able to improve the student-coach ratio. Voluntary coaches do not need to be qualified just an experienced angler

The Committees of the five clubs, KDAA, MAS, CAPS, CPS and Colnes have agreed with continuing with the Initiative this year and dates and venues will be shown in the Handbook and on the KDAA and ACI website.

If you have any decent tackle you no longer require, please consider donating it to ACI for us to pass on to the participants, sometimes as competition prizes.

If you are willing to help, if only for a few sessions, please contact Chris Burt on 07917781299.

www.anglingcoachinginitiative.co.uk

Horse care

Can anglers please remember to close and lock all the gates surrounding Silver End Back Pit.  Horses have strayed into the wrong fields and escaped from the paddocks onto footpaths. The KDAA shares access to the fields surrounding the Back Pit with three different horse owners who also pay rent to the landowner. Can you please respect the rights of these owners to keep their horses secure.

Fish Welfare

The Committee has clarified Fish Welfare Rule 2 ‘Baited rods must not be left unattended and anglers should not be more 3 meters from those rods at any time.’  This is in line with a similarly worded Environment Agency Bylaw. 

Can anglers not cast too close to the islands in Seabrooks and Marney 3 with the risk of overcasting and getting caught up in the bushes and trees or underwater snags resulting in the breaking of hook lengths or main lines. At worst baited terminal tackle can hang down in the water and risk snagging a carp later on resulting in a tethered fish which could eventually die or hanging lines can be snagged by other anglers. Please also do not use plastic baits when fishing near the islands as these can stay on a hanging terminal tackle indefinitely until it is taken by a carp.

Also sitting or standing too far away from your rods can result in fish running towards the islands and get snagged in those roots before you have had the chance react to the run and connect with the fish.

Following concerns raised by some members and after examining the Magic Twig and debating at length the Committee decided that the Magic Twig is banned on KDAA waters. This ban is in line with other local fishing clubs. The reasons for the ban are based on concerns for fish safety. It was felt that when the Magic Twig is sprung when a fish takes the hookbait, the two rigid prongs have a potential for snagging on weed or other underwater objects. When in the landing net the prongs could catch in the mesh and cause hook damage if the fish thrashes around. In the event of a line break the fish could possibly be tethered to underwaters snags.

Working Parties

Working Party dates are not pre-set but will be advertised  by email, on the website and our Facebook Page.

If you would like to help please contact the Fishery Manager, Bob Reed, on 07983801960.  Please put something back and help the club maintain our waters