Last week of the season now and I've been frustrated by the denial of the opportunity to go fishing for 3 months. I considered the possibilities but I was further deterred by news on the BAA website forum of a BAA member who was travelling 40 mins to a venue and stopped by police with ANPR, 15 minutes before eta. Slapped with a £200 fine and made to turn around and go home. In the event i found a local compromise, a running pound on the very local canal below where the river Gade enters and before it leaves again. It was cold and activity (such as it was) took 3 hours to materialise. Net result 3 small bream est 6-12oz and a very small chub; less than 2lbs in total but it was some fish. I'll have a last attempt later this week.

At the end of last week I put an anonymous bid in for our lot, just to get things going. We have a new higher bidder now who has reached the reserve price so whatever happens in the next 3 weeks while the auction remains live, we will have at least 1 extra member next season!

Following yesterday's 'end of lockdown' announcement I've copied the latest thoughts from AT on its implications which as you might anticipate are not good news for us. it seems that my earlier optimism was ill founded. Covid-19 Roadmap Out Of Lockdown: What it means for angling Updated: February 22nd 2021 The Angling Trust has responded to today’s government announcement on the easing of lockdown restrictions in England saying: “Although it’s positive that the government have accepted the case that outdoor activities such as angling should be first to fully open up it looks like no real change for us until March 29th when restrictions are lifted and outdoor sports can resume. The Stay Home message and travel restrictions remain in place until then with the exception of a provision for outdoor recreation as well as exercise. Since angling has been deemed ‘permissible exercise’ throughout lockdown this is unlikely to affect us. “We will know more when the regulations and DCMS guidance are published in the coming days and will update everybody if anything changes. Having a clear date at least means that anglers, clubs and fisheries can plan for the forthcoming season with more certainty and we can all look forward to once again being able to fish our favourite waters in a manner of our choosing.” Currently anglers are restricted to fishing locally once a day, as a form of exercise, with one other person and no organised gatherings or competitions. Most other sports remain prohibited. The Angling Trust submitted a case to government for the early and full resumption of all forms of angling including night fishing and competitions. These will now be possible from March 29th.

As I see it, if the restriction on travel is removed on 8 March (because I can't see much happening ahead of the schools returning on that date), the remainder of our procedures for matches at Littlestoke would be covid-19 compliant and we ought to be able to go ahead on 14th. Whereas we might be (In the loosest sense) in a group larger than 2 (or 6 as it was in tier 3 before Christmas). Under tier 3 group limit regulations we could fish matches, perfectly legally, if we maintained other protocols. With travel restrictions eased we would merely be in the same location rather than 'with' in the meeting and exercising and socialising sense. Clearly this is the thrust of the AT guide to coming out of lockdown.

This is something the 4 Officers discussed at a recent Zoom meeting (where the notes will be circulated to all next week -w/c 1/2/21. There is a schedule of payments used by Pete for determining payouts and in the main payouts for match attendances of 6 or 7 are limited to 1st and 2nd. What your post and the discussion showed was that we need to ensure that this schedule is regularly updated as in recent years our attendances have declined and some aspects of the schedule (ie section payouts) are now not really relevant.