Committee Meetings
Since our last AGM your General Purpose Committee has met on eight occasions and the Delegates Committee has met on three, with one of the GPC meetings being cancelled due to the bad weather in January. Attendance has been average with the stalworts of the Association being ever present. A notice of motion has been put forward to reduce the number of the committee. This is to ease the business of the Association and to hopefully speed through developments that will have a positive impact on both the present and the future of our Association.

Juniors
We now have a Junior Officer in Grant Leech which is something that we've been missing for several years. Please give Grant any support and encouragement that this demanding and important role requires. We are all very good at talking about the future of angling, so let's now move forward and constructively carry something out. Both Grant and myself will be attending a coaching course during April of this year sponsored by the EA.

Angling Trust/Fish Legal
Our previous arrangements with the ACA (membership no. 05233H) are now over, as the organisation has now been wound up. We are now members of the new Angling Trus/Fish Legal (membership no. 38770). Although the new body has not aspired to the numbers of members anticipated, it has nonetheless become up and running. We can only hope that more clubs and individuals join, but my gut reaction is that it could well struggle and already some staff have been layed off to save on costs. It is claimed that the average angler spends £670 per year on angling, yet to ask for 34p per week to join as an individual member is beyond their reach! When lobbying government for improvements in access to waters, money for research and development, money for juniors, or just to take on the various groups that oppose our sport, I find it hard to believe that we just bury our heads in the sand and hope that these problems will go away. I can tell you that they won't and we must support this new body.

Finally, how I saw developments during this past twelve months
The river Dane received another boost with more stocking of barbel along with silver fish. We need a bailiff to monitor both users and the progress of this river. The pools are covered in the Fishery Managers Report and the river Weaver in the Match Secretary's report, all seem to have provided good sport and better than average fishing. Litter remains a national problem, not just confined to angling so there is little for me to add there apart from always leave your swims as you'd wish to find them.
My own angling activities have been affected by illness and a house move, but I intend to address this during the new season.
We continue to strive to open better access and parking, but this will not happen overnight as many of our problems involve complex negotiations with both the local authorities and land owners.
The night fishing experiment has been a success and hopefully may be added to in the near future. What must be remembered is that all these added benefits require time and work from members of this committee who many basically work for nothing.
A new advertising poster has been put together by Maurice, our website controller and I can tell you that it is first class as is all of the work done by Maurice for us. We hope to encourage more members and to reverse the decline in membership witnessed over recent seasons. We will never be able to compete with the commercials and why would we want to? They don't have natural, wild rivers containing real barbel and chub as do this Association, nor do they have the huge numbers of roach and bream that reside in our own river Weaver.
Finally may I thank all the Officers, Bailiffs and Members for their continued support and wish you all a happy and successful new season.

Thanks for listening.

Steve Beech, Secretary, WDAA