February 2011 Newsletter
It is so close, you can taste it! After all these months of cabin fever and cold, warmer weather is on the way, and the beginning of the season will be here soon. Time is running out for taking care of those maintenance items you have been putting off, such as changing your lower unit oil, re-packing your trailer bearings, and cleaning/oiling your reels. It is much better to take care of these tasks now that it is cold rather than waiting for the week before our opening tournament. Check out the article A Maintenance Resolution for some tips on getting your gear ready for prime time. Don't forget to renew those licenses and lake permits as well.
Also, there is a good opportunity to get a tune up for your fishing skills by attending the final Winter Series event at Lake Meade on February 19th. See the Tourney Intents board for details.
While you have hopefully been busy preparing for the season, the officers at Bass-Jons have been busy re-designing the website, putting together our schedule, and finalizing our roster.
If you are reading this, you already know that the website has undergone a massive transformation. I focused on retaining all the existing content from the old site, while improving the layout to allow our visitors and members to more easily navigate through the site. Besides the aesthetic and speed benefits for our vistors, the new hosting service allows Bass-Jons to cut costs, reduce managment effort, and store more images and data than before. This makes for more cash to payout to our anglers' at the Classic, and a happier webmaster.
Our schedule is complete, and while we are still confirming an August date for the Bass'n-9 tournament, we have used a "fixed venue" format for this year where we selected all the lakes/rivers at our January meeting. We added one new venue, the Northwest River, which we will fish in October for our last regular-season event before the Classic. Check out our schedule here.
We are currently in the process of filling out our roster for the 2011 season. We have many great anglers returning from last year, as well as some new guys to add to the mix. I am in the process of contacting all the members from last year that have not posted an intent to return this year to get their status and finalize the roster. Due to our current membership composition, we have to temporarily close the membership to prospective non-boaters until we finalize our numbers and add more boaters. This ensures that we don't get into a situation where we have to tell our non-boaters that we do not have a back-seat available. We still have membership openings for boaters, so if anyone knows of any boaters who want to be a part of our club, that will allow us to bring in more non-boaters as well.
Finally, I wanted to review the procedure for posting your intent to fish our upcoming tournaments. Two weeks before the first tournament, our Tournament Director, Dennis Sclater, will post an Intent to Fish message on the Tourney Intents Message board, which is accessible from the Club page or Members-Only page. To declare your intention to fish/not fish, simply reply to this message, filling in your name, and in the subject line, list your intent. The Subject Line should look something like the following:
- Yes, Boater
- Yes, Non-Boater
- Yes, Family Plan with <Family Member Name>
- Yes, Boater with Guest <Guest Name>
- No, Can't Make It
Remember to supply your guest or family member name in your intent so we can update our records. Also, make sure to post a "No" intent if you can't make it. If you fail to post an intent or contact an officer for three straight tournaments, then your membership will be placed in "Inactive" status as a member to allow us to promote prospective members from the waiting list.
That's all for now, and I look forward to the coming season. Remember to post fishing reports, send me new articles, and contribute to the discussions on our message boards. This site is only as good as the content that our members and visitors provide to us.
Daniel Griffin
Vice-President, Bass-Jons
