YSAA NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2026

Dear member

Hope you had a good Christmas and didn’t over indulge too much last night for the New Year, looking forward the website has been updated with all the relevant information for 2026, entry and exit times, match dates, parking in the visitors car park and much more, we have more good news regarding our venues which I will tell you about.

LAKE NEWS
As you know the shallows opened in November and it’s a long walk from the cattle grid parking area so Paul has been in contact with Castle Garden Centre and we have obtained permission to park in their car park and walk in  which will be a lot shorter walk, I will contact you all with a date when we can start using the car park,YSAA would like to thank Mike at the garden centre, Geoff, Barry and Andy have for some weeks been refurbishing the platforms with nearly 600 fibre glass non-slip strips, a big thank you to them and Steve ford and Steve Mc Cabe who have helped with the installation
Now on to the fishing, we have had a few reports of big Bream being caught but not in large numbers, some nice roach and skimmers as well, a few Tench and small Carp have been caught in the shallows, most of the catches have been on the feeder, we have heard a rumour of a 30lb Pike being found dead up by the island, if anyone has some information on this please let us know, on a brighter note we are awaiting a delivery of nearly £5,000 of Bream, these fish will be between 3 and 5lb and there will be just over a hundred of them, unfortunately we couldn’t get the Tench.

MATCH NEWS
Our last match of 2025 was the Christmas match at SB and we had a brilliant day despite the atrocious weather, the winner on the day was Scott with 13lb of silvers, Each member received a selection of prizes  paid for by the club, our Christmas match is only open to members who regularly fished and supported our club matches throughout the year, our first match of 2026 will be the end of this month at NP if the river is not in the fields.

RIVER NEWS
Some more good news, we have now acquired the fishing rights on a stretch of the Yeo at Mudford it’s from the road bridge on the right hand bank looking down stream to the bridge over the weir then after the weir on the same bank for the next two fields, access to the river is along the Chilton Cantelo road past the farm shop/Hinton farm, I have not received many reports regarding our rivers probably due to the fact they were in flood for most of December but if you can find some slack water you will catch, the odd few days when the river has been fishable we have had some nice Chub from Ilchester, our river Pike fishing has almost been non-existent due to the very coloured water, our river project on the Wriggle is moving forward with planned site visits by the EA and AT, the same applies to Wyndham hill walk so a big thank you to Graham, Mark and Phil

BRIAN’S TOP TIP
Unfortunately there is no top tip from Brian this month as he is on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean 🤣🤣🤣

COMMITTEE
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members for their hard work, dedication and commitment over the last year, our clubs AGM and prize giving is fast approaching and will again be held at Johnson Park on Tuesday 17^th February, I will confirm all the details in next month’s newsletter, In the meantime if anyone has got any questions or concerns about the club please let us know beforehand and hopefully we will have all the answers ready at the AGM

I will be back again next month so take care enjoy your fishing

Many thanks
Kind regards
Gary