President’s Report September 2016
Phil Appleyard
Dear Delegates, our guests and hosts
Being in the company of the delegates and leaders of so many clubs affiliated to the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council is something that Andrea and I look forward to every year. Your passion and commitment to serving your clubs and fellow delegates is what makes this Council strong and durable. Thank you for your efforts and enthusiasm.
Our Council is well served by its Board members and various sub-committees whose energies and endeavors seem to grow by the month. Keeping up to speed with these guys has been challenging. I want to thank our secretary, treasurer and Executive Officer Dave Lockwood. Your regular attendance and support has made such a difference to my Presidency this year. There have been times when we have both been stretched to our limits. I am pleased to advise we now have a handle on the business of Council and are now squarely focused on fine tuning our new systems and refining our governance procedures. The feedback and advice we receive from experienced and vigilant delegates at Zone level offers us good insights as to where improvements are required.
It has been a busy year for the Fishing sub-committee with the braid debate getting real attention at IGFA level. Thanks to Mark Hemmingway and Pete Saul taking the time to travel to Florida to participate in the highly anticipated IGFA Symposium. Mark and Pete will brief us in more detail later at this year’s AGM.
This year we conducted our first Nationals without Roz Nelson at the helm. A quite daunting prospect. We can see how busy Roz has been for all those years. We all enjoyed outstanding fishing and comradeship. With 1875 anglers from xx clubs competing hard we had our hands full. For the first time we were trialing club recorders entering their own catch records into the contest database. This was a successful trial with some good lessons learnt. We intend to develop the capacity for all clubs to do likewise in the near future. We are delighted to welcome ITM aboard, joining Simrad in a co-sponsorship role for the 2017 Nationals.
In April we passed another milestone with the 1000th presentation of the Hiwi the Kiwi Goes Fishing interactive show for primary aged school children. Both myself and Dave Lockwood, our Executive Officer, attended the presentation at Havelock North Primary School, in Hawke’s Bay.
I would like to acknowledge Mark and Chris de Lacy for their enthusiastic presentations, Evan Mackay for his years of dedication and organisation, and our generous long-term supporters for this important programme. These supporters include Kilwell Sports, New Zealand Fishing News, Profile Boats, Black Magic Tackle, The Big Fish, and the Guardians of the Sea Charitable Trust. Collectively we have invested more than $300,000 in this project to teach kids how to fish for the future and stay safe around the water.
The Fisheries Management Marine Protection team, ably led by Chairman Peter Campbell, has kept us well informed on the many processes we are engaged with. At just over $2.00 per affiliated member we can rest assured our investment into this aspect of Council business is being well utilised. Together with the growing number of LegaSea Legends who are stepping up alongside us we are delivering on our promise of taking a constructive, practical and proactive approach to fisheries management, while offering logical and positive solutions to rebuild our fisheries and restore marine productivity.
The Communications sub-committee has delivered on their promise to deliver an E-zine publication dedicated to sportfishing club members. The latest issues of Hooked Up have been a pleasure to read. Your efforts are appreciated team.
I want to take this opportunity to thank both Warren (Wazza) Harris and Kelvin Mowat for their many years of service and commitment to the NZSFC Board. They have been a pleasure to work with and I would like you all to join me in wishing them the best of days fishing which will invariably be sunny and calm on days otherwise scheduled for Board meetings.
The Whangamata Ocean Sports Club crew promise to deliver terrific hospitality for our AGM. Their organisation has been most impressive and I am sure we are all looking forward to being there.
For next year’s AGM we are to be hosted by the Tauranga Sport Fishing Club, one of the five founding clubs.
Thank you