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

Head bailiff's report

FMC report

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!