We will be applying Siltex to the lakes from the 17th -20th February

The plan is to do:

17th Feb - Broadwater and Johnson's

18th Feb - Johnson's and Marsh Farm

19th Feb - Marsh Farm and Wood lake

These dates my change depending on conditions and may run over to the 20th.

we apologise for any inconvenience.

If you want to sign up in-person for your 26-27 season membership we are running three sessions at the Marsh Farm pavilion.

Dates are:

Friday 1st May 9-12

Saturday 9th May 9-12

Friday 15th May 9-12

Please pay by either cheque or cash if possible as it m processing payments quicker.

Here are the officer reports ready for you to read prior to the 2026 AGM on the 11th of April.

Junior organiser report

Once again our summer coaching programme proved popular and was heavily booked from the start. We now limit numbers on these sessions and I think this makes for a more positive experience for all attending.
Our regular local scout, cub and beaver groups returned this year as did Broadwater School. We also ran a very successful session for Godalming Youth Services. Once again over 250 local youngsters had a chance to experience fishing through our programmes.
Our junior summer league ran very successfully again with a competitive league and up to 10 juniors competing in each leg. Finley Tester ran out winner on his last appearance as a junior. Finley has moved on to compete for a place in the England youth national squad. A group of good anglers were hot on his heels with Haydon, Cameron, Ralphie, Reggie , Leo and Zak all competing for the places. Thanks to our support from the get fishing fund we can now offer any youngest who wants to try a match a pole and a seatbox to borrow for the day. This removes the huge barrier of cost to anyone starting out in match fishing. We can also provide the support with a team of match oriented coaches led by Ben and Paul, who can guide beginners through the tactics needed to succeed in a match.
Less successful was the junior carp events at Broadwater. This year we did not have enough youngsters sign up to run the night event. Many older anglers will remember the Broadwater night match being oversubscribed with several young anglers sharing a peg. Times have changed and night fishing is clearly not the novelty it once was.
Thanks to Kevin, Paul S, Dave B, Ben, Andy, Paul C, Dan, Dawn, Brian, Val and the not-so retired Bill Harris for their help and enthusiasm. We are lucky to have such a great team - without whom our programme simply would not exist!

Secretary's report

You will see from the proposals that Dave Ewing has agreed to take over from me formally as Society Secretary, so, this is my last report in that role. I only ever intended to be a stop gap Secretary when Malcolm Richardson retired, as no one else would do it. I have now been in that temporary position for over ten years. There is a lesson to be learned there!

New Gen. Committee member

We have recently co-opted Ed Wade to the General Committee. I think quite a few of you will know of Ed.

Membership numbers have remained reasonably steady, but there is a slight drop in numbers last year, whilst the income has increased slightly.

Whilst we no longer do so much work with FMC work parties, Historically, that is how we used to find new blood for the General Committee. If you feel you are able to give some of your time, to share whatever talents you can bring to the party, please do mention it to any one on the committee. We have had some great times working on the banksides and in FMC over the years. It has always been a good way to get to understand what skills people have and meanwhile get work done on Society Waters in an enjoyable way.

Clubmate

I believe that the move to using Clubmate has been an improvement for the benefit of our members and reducing our work in membership administration. The decision has been made that we will no longer issue a printed handbook, which including associated postage will save us around £12,000 annually. The Clubmate Bailiffs App is being updated and will replace the need for the handbook at the bankside. But, every member needs to be aware of the rules and amendments to them, which will be updated as necessary on the GAS website.

Treasurer's report

Finances

I am in the middle of feeding info to our accountants and responding to various schedules and queries that they send to me. So, any comments here are based solely on the basis of our cash books and before the accountants have made any of their usual adjustments, for tax liabilities, accruals and allowances for prepayments etc.

The Society’s income to the end of 2025 was over the £400,000 mark. Our expenditure around the £310,000 mark in cash terms from our books. We should therefore see a healthy excess of income over expenditure even after our accountants make all the necessary adjustments as mentioned previously.

This will be welcome after the excesses of our maintenance costs last year (2024). However the expenditure in 2024 was well spent, in my view, with a large amount being spent on rebuilding swims at Broadwater and Marsh Farm along with associated tree works at most of our waters.

More details about both GAS income and expenditure should be available to you all at the AGM on 11 th April 2026 as usual.

In view of the income surplus, the loss of Bramley Park Lake and the dropping of the printed Society handbook, the Gen Committee felt it prudent to not increase the membership subscriptions, at this time. Unfortunately the costs we incur do continue to increase steadily and I imagine there will have to be a significant rise again in membership charges in 2027.

New Leases

We have signed the new lease for Winkworth Arboretum for another ten years . We will be looking again at the practicalities of predator stocking to give you another option, running alongside the existing Winkworth Fly Fishers trout fishing activities.

Thanks

I have already recorded my thanks to Dave Ewing and I would like to extend similar thanks to Keith Baxter who has also absorbed several of the other roles that I used to undertake. Keith like Dave has been great and I am sure they both will have new ideas. .

We might get lots of the maintenance and FMC works undertaken by outsourcing to contractors, but we still rely heavily on our Officers and Committee members giving freely of their time and energy to manage Society matters. So, thank you to all of them for doing so.

The one person that I always need to thank above all others, over the last thirty plus years is of course my wife Bernice. Many of you will know her. You may have seen her doing the bailiffing at Marsh Farm with me in the past, or delivering paperwork and day tickets to Apollo and collecting the used books adding them all up and advising how much they need to pay. Helping to do the tenants invoices monthlyand responding to phone calls from the public and members alike. She has been fantastic.

Finally, thank you all for being members of GAS, It is your Society so please feel free to offer to help out if you can as this can be rewarding and fun. I wish you all another season of fishing on the fantastic GAS waters.

Graham Harris

Membership secretary report

We will not be issuing handbooks for the 2026-27 season. The cost of printing and posting handbooks is about £12,000 a year.  We can save most of this money if we use the facilities of CLUBMATE to check memberships on the bank.

Digital membership cards. When you buy your new membership please download the CLUIBMAZATE app.  On it you will have a digital membership card that will show your membership status and whether you have bought a  night permit or not. Pleas note: This only works if you buy your night permit as a bolt-on to your membership. The CLUBMATE app will work even when you have no phone signal so you can show a bailiff your membership anywhere. If you don’t own a smartphone please print off your membership acceptance e-mail.

Bailiff app.  Bailiffs can also check any membership on the bank using their bailiff app.

Renewals will be available to purchase through Clubmate from the 1^st of May.

New memberships will be available for the 1016-17 season from the 1^st of June.

In person sign up sessions will be held at Marsh Farm pavilion from 9-12 am on:

• Friday the 1^st may
• Saturday the 9^th May
• Friday the 15th may

Head bailiff's report

FMC report

 The 2025 / 2026 season was another busy year for the Fishery Management Team. Good water quality is the foundation of everything else that happens on our fisheries and we have kept up our cycles of twice annual siltex and weekly barley straw extract application. Siltex is calcium
carbonate which helps break down organic waste, slow the buildup of silt and increase the presence of invertebrates in our lakes. The barley straw extract benefits our waters by releasing lignin and hydrogen peroxide which inhibits the growth of algae while being harmless to fish and other plant
life. We have found the barley straw extract to be easier to use than barley straw bales. The effectiveness of these interventions was demonstrated during the long hot summer of 2026 when we managed to avoid the heavy algae blooms that we have seen on some of our waters in the past.

Thanks to Lee Noakes and Dave Ewing for help with marshalling the delivery of siltex at Broadwater, a thankless task that always throws up challenges. Thanks also to Drew and his team for humping the siltex in an out of boats which is a seriously physical task involving literally tonnes of material…and finally thanks to Daniel Lake, Rebecca Lewer and George Channell for getting us out of a fix when our haulier’s equipment broke down. You are all appreciated!

We have also been working on the health of our stock. In 2024 we had some concerns about the prevalence of the fish louse argulus at both Marsh Farm and Johnsons. Argulus feeds by attaching itself to fish and liquifying the flesh which is digests. Nasty in itself, the parasite can cause ulcers,
secondary infections and ultimately death. We researched the issue and Graham Wilson and Dean Martin have been applying Natrepel to our Autumn, Winter and Spring feed for the waters affected. Pipe traps which are used to trap and destroy the argulus eggs have also been installed on Johnsons and a managed by Graham Wilson and the bailiff team. The results have been excellent and we have had a sharp decline in reports of argulus attached to our fish in both angling results and nettings.
Thanks guys.

The Winter feed programme has worked well and the improved condition and size of carp being caught at Broadwater over the last year is testimony to the work of the bailiff team in keeping the fish fed and active when fishing effort and consequently bait going into the water is less. Going to
the lake in the cold and wet can feel a lonely task at times so thank you for getting that done.

During the winter of 2024 /25 we had various conversations with our President Peter Stovold, Natural England and the Environment Agency concerning our wish to repair the groynes at Eashing. We obtained the necessary regulatory consent and in July Callum Withums led a small team on the river to get the work done. These groynes serve to vary flow along the river creating a number of different habitats that support both large and small fish. We have been pleased with the performance of the refurbished groynes which have withstood the test of the repeated winter floods
of early 2026 very well. We would like to do further projects of this type where landowners and the responsible authorities are supportive.

Staying with the river, during the summer of 2025 we used water pressure jets to loosen the gravel and displace the accumulated silt between the stones at Eashing weir pool and below Eashing bridge. This improves the prospects for spawning chub and barbel dace and will need to be periodically repeated. In the meantime, thank you to Simon Brimfield, Graham Lovell and Leon forhelp with the 2025 programme. There is also a special mention for Ed Wade who supplied the parts and Colin Miles who fabricated the pressure jets for us. In 2026, we will be extending the area of gravel at Eashing and we will be looking for volunteers to help. This will be physical work so not something for everyone but hopefully we can get a good team out.

Other river projects have included pinning a fallen willow in place at Upper Common Meadow (thank you to James Larke and Callum Withums for help with that) and placing strings of very fine netting in the river at Eashing as a medium on which roach can spawn. Research shows that the roach show a preference of the fine netting over natural weed for which it is a substitute and sadly, we have so little weed in the river these days something that is probably the result of raw sewage causing a chemical imbalance in the water. Roger Howe is to thank for proving the netting for this project.

There continues to be a volume of work to do at Broadwater much of it concerned with improving the buffer zone vegetation at the top end of the lake. Dave Ewing helped with the planting of sedges and iris and also with the cutting of the willow whips which growth every Spring. The effect of this work on the fishing is marginal but hopefully makes the place more pleasant for our anglers to visit.

Erosion has been a problem at Broadwater and we have used coir logs to restore the banks around a couple of swims. These were planted but unfortunately, the effect was lost as the plants where destroyed, whether by dogs or anglers or other persons unknown remains a mystery. We have also started a trial on backfilling one of the ponds that have formed behind the nicospan banking. The trial is in the early stages but we will be planting this Spring to progress matters.

As people come and go the allocation of tasks within GAS changes. This Winter, the Fishery Management Team have taken on responsibility for various land management tasks including tree surveys, tree works, cutting brambles and fence repairs. All has gone well so far but the scale of what needs to be done can be a challenge at times. Luckily, we have a good team of tree surgeons and fencing contractors who we have worked with over a number of years and the hand over has gone very well. Please look out for notices on Facebook and the Website for when lakes are closed for tree works. We try to keep these to a minimum but essential work and sometime unexpected work is required from time to time. Stock manipulation is something of a standing item for the FMC team with various initiatives to both stock and crop our fish populations. Our most significant stocking this year was in February when we took delivery of 1,800 crucian carp which have been distributed across Harris, Richardson, Wood Lake and Hill Pond. This is the second year running that we have boosted our crucian populations and the programme is likely to be continued in the next stocking round. Clive Larke has already succeeded in securing a supply of chub and barbel from the Environment Agency’s Calverton facility which will go into the river late 2026 or early 2027. Thanks to Ade Bicknell at the Environment Agency for help with that one. Overall, our aim is to maintain a healthy balance of fish across our sites and a diverse range of angling experiences for our members across the estate.

It has been a very busy year and I am sure that there are some achievements and contributions that I have forgotten…forgive me!
Members are reminded that Fishery Management Committee meetings are held on the third Wednesday of the month at the Marsh Farm Pavilion. We start at 7.30pm and all members are welcome to attend. If you would like to deepen your involvement with the Society please come along or send Keith Baxter or Clive Larke a message.

Match secretary's report

The match scene remains buoyant with good regular weekly attendances despite several missing with health issues. Throughout the summer the popular Wed opens at Marsh farm ran from April until Oct and were well attended with many “Open regulars” joining the club. We also hosted a couple of qualifiers for the Fish South competition with Godalming angler Steve (Drawbag) Livingstone qualifying for the grand final so we wish him well for his chances.

Numbers were understandably slightly down during the winter months when our focus turns to commercials.  Since the turn of the year effected things with Ice followed by constant rain flooding venues.  Despite all this It was nice to see welcome several new faces this year.

We had good club matches on our stillwaters with Bramley, Wood, Johnsons and Broadwater all producing good catches before winter set in. This season we will had couple of successful “All in “ matches at Broadwater but sadly we have lost Bramley as a club water so no match work parties this season, although I will be talking to the Wood lake bailiffs about possible help there instead.

Once again there are more commercials in the winter months as they are more productive than natural waters and therefore very popular despite the extra cost that continues to rise although we have managed to hold our entry /pools prices at a reasonable level for the time being.

Please note that as there will be no club book this year following the transmission to clubmate. I will therefore post the 26-27 fixtures on the website calendar and at Marsh farm and I will distribute copies amongst the regulars. Forthcoming matches will also be posted on club water notice boards to alert members in advance of closures for matches.

I would like to thank all of those who helped me throughout the year with pegging and standing in in my absence.

Tight line to you all!