Dear Members,
If anyone has any proposals for the AGM 15th Nov, they must be received by midnight tonight, with a proposer and seconder. sent to [email protected]
Thank you
Mervyn Club Secretary.
Barnstaple & District Angling Club AGM will be held in the Ebberly Arms, Bear Street, Barnstaple on Tuesday 12th November at 7.30pm. There is free evening parking in the car park at the rear. This is always a friendly social evening, and we are expecting a good attendance as in previous years.
Bidefords 48-hour sea Rover results
1st Jon Stevens Bull Huss 12lb 13.5oz 128.437%
2nd Richard Jefferies Bull Huss 12lb 12oz 127.5%
| NOTE TO ALL MEMBERS
The 2024 AGM of the BDAC will be held at the Bideford Con Club on November 15th @ 19:30 for 20:00 prompt start. Please note all proposals for change of rules or applications to join the committee in any capacity must be put in writing to the club secretary Mervyn Beal, with the name of a seconder to [email protected] by 23:59 on the 25/10/24 Due to the retirement of our Tarka manager Steve Bailey and Karen’s Lake secretary Jake England we need to elect members to take their positions, these are both big jobs that are vital to the running of our Tarka complex, and it’s no exaggeration to say that failure to fill the Tarka Managers post will have a great impact on the running and well keeping of the whole site. For more information on these posts please contact Steve or Jake who will explain what’s required. Could you ALL please make an effort to attend, there is a minimum number of people needed to form a quorum, and to make decisions on rules / fees etc. Hope to see you all there. Pete Skinner Club Chairman. |
Pauline and I attended the Get Fishing Day at Anglers Paradise where over fifty keen newcomers to the angling world attended to receive invaluable advice and tuition from a team of Angling Trust accredited coaches. The day was divided into two half’s and participants rotated between three lakes including the Float Fishing lake, New Easy Cat lake and beginners carp lake.
( Below) Martyn Green delivered Fly casting tuition.
I feel sure that all who took part found the day invaluable in providing an introduction to the fundamentals of angling and the various set ups and tactics.
It was fascinating to watch the various coaches at work demonstrating the many varied methods used to tempt carp and other coarse fish.
A large number of small fish were tempted on the float lake ensuring that all had the chance to catch their first fish. Fish care was one of the main focus areas of the day with good principles highlighted throughout the sessions.
The day was sponsored by the Environment Agency, Angling Trust, Angling Direct, Shakespeare, Anglers Paradise and Dynamite Baits.
The event was very family oriented with every generation represented and the values to mental well-being and a valuable connection with nature very apparent.
Dean Asplin of the Angling Trust and Zenia Drury Gregorek did a Stirling job of organising the event at this extensive and popular angling venue.
(Below) Olivia Diebney enjoys catching a common carp
Eleven year old Bobby Lean certainly had a weekend to remember fishing with his father who was coaching on the New Easy Cat lake. During the afternoon session he banked a catfish in front of an appreciative audience. Then staying on overnight with his dad Gary Lean they fished the Nirvana Specimen catfish Lake banking huge catfish of 84lb and 72lb!
Below are several images from the day that was blessed with sunshine and light winds.
I was saddened to learn earlier this week that Summerlands Tackle Shop at Westward Ho! is closing soon a big surprise, it seems that they have always been there. No longer will we be able to pop into Summerlands whilst visiting Westward Ho! In fact Summerlands was generally the main reason for us to visit Westward Ho!
Nick Laws founded Summerlands Tackle back in 1985 close to forty years ago and for as long as I can remember there has always been a cheery welcome from the family run business. Nick has lived in and around Westward Ho! all his life and has fished the local shore since his childhood days when he would fish the beach with his father taking home the occasional bass for his mother to cook.
Summerlands became the social hub of the local angling community with anglers of all disciplines meeting to swap tales over a coffee and the occasional slice of cake. Local tackle shops are at the core of anglings social network and many a friendship and trip to the water’s edge has been forged.
In recent years Nick and Louise have taken a back seat with the business their daughter Heather and her husband Simon taking the reign’s and keeping it very much in the family.
On hearing the news that Summerlands was closing I headed down to wish the family well for the future. The quick visit soon became a couple of hours as other local anglers called into the shop chatting about the good times they had enjoyed over the years. Heather told me that she was heartened by the warmth that had been evident from the well -wishers who had called into the shop having heard the news.
I asked Heather if she had a message for customers and this is the piece she carefully prepared for the shops social media page.
“So as our family now moves on and explores new possibilities and the founders of Summerlands get their well earnt retirement. All that is for us to say is THANK YOU. It has always been about you the customer and you are the part we are saddest about leaving. The friendships we have made with customers and also within the trade we will always cherish and it has been an absolute honour to serve you and work with you over the last four decades. We hope to see you to say goodbye and celebrate our final chapter with you as we close the book on the best fishing tackle shop adventure ever. Tight lines always we will miss you the Summerlands Tackle family over and out.”
Much has changed in the world of angling and beyond in the past forty years and we reflected upon this as we chatted. Nick reminisced fondly about fishing forays to Ireland where he had enjoyed fishing those famous surf beaches for bass. The tackle of the day was very basic in comparison to many of the state of the art rods sold in Summerlands over the past decades.
Over the coming weeks starting on Saturday 31st August there will be an EVERTHING MUST GO SALE.
On a personal note I wish all those at Summerlands the best for the future and would like to thank them for their support with North Devon Angling News since 2016. The closing of Summerlands will leave a void in the local angling scene but we are fortunate that we have several excellent tackle shops across North Devon.
Renewables deliver the cheapest electricity in history. So follow the profits …
If you want to burn money, then investing in a company that’s about to be wiped out by a new technology is a good way to go. History is littered with the wreckage of complacent has-beens mugged by progress. Stranded Assets.
So does this ever happen to countries? Could there be some budding technology, so ignored or sneered at that the threat is overlooked by the masses and their political leaders. Until, suddenly, it blindsides them?
Well, how about renewable energy? Populist opinion says it’s expensive, annoying and tastes like cardboard. And if Donald Trump wins then the fanboys expect to Dig baby, dig and Burn baby, burn. American coal, oil and gas are cheap, right? And a nation that runs on cheaper energy becomes richer than its neighbours. To the winner, the spoils.
The catch in this is that on-shore wind and solar are now a lot cheaper and more profitable to build and run than fossil fuels.
According to the World Economic Forum, the price of solar electricity has fallen 90% in just 10 years, making it “the cheapest electricity in history”. Onshore wind is close behind and utility-scale battery costs have also fallen 90% in a decade (IEA). The days when renewables carried premium prices are gone and the word is spreading: There are fortunes to be made in cheap green energy.
Take Texas, where they subsidise fossil fuels and claim legislative hurdles to obstruct renewables. It’s not working:
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Forbes Magazine, not noted for its bunny-hugging, reports that soaring Texan wind and solar energy deployment cut wholesale state electricity costs by $31.5 billion between 2010-2022, with $11 billion in 2022 alone. Whoops. Officially, that’s not meant to be happening.
The Financial Times, also no bunny-hugger, smells profit: “Economics can turn even the biggest climate change sceptic into a clean energy evangelist. This is exactly what has happened in Texas.” So green money is growing political muscle while coal, oil and gas wilt.
Meanwhile, Forbes also reports a massive business opportunity: it says 99% of America’s remaining coal plants cost more to keep running than to replace with wind and solar. And that swapping in clean energy for uneconomic coal would save enough money to finance more than 150 gigawatts’ worth of electricity storage – which, it says, is roughly ten times the total US utility-scale battery capacity as of 2023.
Instead of shutting down these smokestack has-beens, their owners, backed by complicit/corrupt politicians, are investing new capital and tax-payer subsidies to keep them running. They’re increasing utility debt on uncompetitive assets and bilking their customers for the hiked costs. This lays the groundwork for financial disaster. Screwing your customers andtaxpayers on this scale is not sustainable.
Elsewhere, US consumers in states with high renewable generation pay less for their power (Republican South Dakota produced 83% of its in-state electricity from renewables in ‘22). We are witnessing a global flight of capital out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy – and it transcends party politics.
The world is changing, although a lot of people on the left and right margins still believe going green is about hugging trees, hand-wringing and chewing tofu. Forget that: Renewables are the new gold rush. Ask a capitalist. Or read the Economist.
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Looking ahead, where does this leave major infrastructure investments like refineries, the global shipping fleet carrying oil and gas, and huge pipeline projects? Answer: up shit-creek without the proverbial. Pssst: wanna buy a used oil refinery?
And before someone says electrification needs more mining than fossil fuels; no it doesn’t. The annual hole in the ground needed to service the old energy economy is in the region of 15 billion tonnes (oil, coal & gas). The IEA predicts that by the 2040s we will need 28 to 40 million tonnes of minerals to run the renewables energy economy. On my fingers that’s a big deal. And it creates a lot of stranded mining assets, because there’s going to be a lot less mining.
So the resistance comes from the declining but still fabulously wealthy fossil fuel sector, which faces losing its shirt. Meanwhile, at the political margins, some people can’t see the $s for red mist. Neither the ideologically hard-core anti-growth greens nor their knuckle-dragging opponents in their deeply tedious woke wars (it takes two) are economically significant. So while they hurl brickbats and get lost in click-bait minutiae, the market has left them behind:
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And the US is playing catch-up. In the first 6 months of the year it built 20.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity (US EIA), a 21 percent increase from the first half of last year. Which is not as good as it sounds.
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We started with the idea that the USA might lose its top-dog status (or worse). So if the future is cheap energy and that buys a big competitive advantage, who wins and who loses? The answer is easy: The amount of wind and solar power under construction in China is now nearly twice as much as the rest of the world combined.
China has 440 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale renewables underway. The US has 40. As it comes online China will reap the benefits.
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And what of Net Zero – that red-mist-inducing 2050 target? Well, it seems safe to say that the first 90% of the journey will deliver cheaper more profitable energy to industry and consumers. Imagine saying that even 10 years ago. The last 10% is generally held to be a bigger ask, but given the amazing speed at which renewable tech is evolving would you bet against this turning out to be much easier than we thought? So we’ll get there because it’s cheaper for users and more profitable for investors.
So what price the USA? My take is that the US fossil fuel industry is already losing global market, wealth and friends. This will accelerate. So there are major geopolitical consequences to Burn Baby, Burn.
The winners will be the Chinese and the countries (and companies) leading the charge into renewables as their costs continue to plummet. A nation or company that runs on cheap energy has a competitive advantage over its competitors that don’t. And it just so happens that the cheapest energy is renewable. So follow the money. There’s still plenty to do, not least the grid, but the direction of travel is set and accelerating.
Renewables are too profitable to fail. And what’s not to like about that?
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South West Lakes Reservoirs hold some stunning carp and other species and are well worth visiting.
(Above) Chris Tester caught this 26lb Mirror at Upper Tamar.
Well done Mervyn!
Ethan Broom 2024 Junior Champion
Bruce Elston fished Anglers Paradises Eldorado Cat and Carp Lake 2 and found that the catfish were on the feed banking specimens of 25lb 7oz, 34lb 11oz and a personal best of 60lb.
