Strong Foundations

Club History by Don Woodford

Back in the late 60’s I was a member of the GoldCoast Game Fishing Club. As such I became friends with Pat Gaye, the then President of the QGFA and later President of the GFAA. I’d been a fisherman, estuary and bluewater all my life, but Pat taught me the rudiments of game fishing, or in reality, fishing for sport. 1970 saw me take off for four years to the Solomon Islands, an untouched sport fisherman’s paradise. In 1972 I founded the Bouganville Sport and Game Fish Club and the club adopted the rules of the GFAA affiliated through QGFA. I returned to Australia after Easter 1974 and started the business known as Labrador Bait & Tackle.

I rejoined the Gold Coast Game Fish Club and became a Committee member. Running a tackle shop you meet all sorts of people, fishermen and women, and it soon became evident that there was a need for a club on the Gold Coast where people, ordinary people, could learn to fish and to fish for sport under a banner away from the supposed rich mans guise of Game Fishing.

The Foundation

During late 1975 I started gathering information on the Australian National Sportfishing Association, A.N.S.A., and by May 1976 had gained approval from ANSA Qld via John O’Sullivan, the Secretary to go ahead with the attempt to form a club on the Gold Coast. The original “Strike” (for Game Fisherman column in the G.C. Bulletin and the blue water radio segment on 4GG was run by Bert Cockerill, a G.C. Game Fish Club member. Bert was conned into giving media coverage for the new club I was trying to form as an alternative to the GFAA club and a number of A.A.A. clubs in operation on the Gold Coast.

Interested public were asked to attend a meeting at the Pacific Hotel in Southport on 29th June 1976. Surprisingly, I had thirty five people turn up to this first meeting, twenty two of whom eventually became solid members. At this meeting steering committee was elected to carry the club through the fortnight to the next meeting and actual formation of the club on July 13th 1976. I was elected President of the Steering Committee and then President of the club for the year 1976/77.

The Idea Explodes

From the outset, my idea had been to form a Sportfishing club with a primary proposal to teach people off the street how to fish, then to fine tune them into sport fishermen. From the first meeting, the idea was a winner, people could walk off the street on the first Tuesday of the month and physically learn to tie a knot, bait a hook, catch a particular species of fish. By the end of the first year the club had 189 members on the books.

The Problems

The meetings were held in the Poinciana Room of the Pacific Hotel with anything up to 80 or 100people attending. The initial membership held very few people who could actually sportfish which created a definite lack of lecturers, presenters and demonstrators. I took to crusading amongst the ranks of the clubs to encourage fishermen to duel membership. After all, under ANSA rules they could now weigh in non game fish such as snapper etc. Being in the trade I was able to go directly to trade lecturers such as Don McPherson of Platypus lines Les Wilson of Wilson Tackle. To this day Don and Les have remained staunch allies of the club.

That first year was a busy year for me. The first committee was formed from people off the streetwho really knew nothing. My secretary found himself unable to handle the correspondence and the ob folded back to me, likewise the Publicity Officers job. In the middle of all this Bert Cockerill decided to go overseas for six weeks and handed his twice daily radio reports over to me and then the weekly “Strike” column in the Gold Coast Bulletin.

My business, Labrador Bait & Tackle, was already blossoming but with the advent of the club, everything exploded. The little shop became the meeting house, the weigh station, the lecture room and the street a boat yard. Quite often, impromptu lectures and demonstration went on until sometimes 8 or 9am. However the club was on it’s way.