The club secretary's year, month by month
What running an Irish angling club involves across a year: renewals, the stamp, the season opening, permits, juniors, the AGM, and where the admin goes.
By Alex Baker, Tadpole
Nobody joins a club committee to do admin. They join because they like fishing and somebody asked. Then they find out that the secretary's year has a shape to it, the shape repeats, and the same weeks are hard every time.
This is that shape, from our own club and the others we talk to. It is written to be useful whether or not you use anything of ours. Dates vary by fishery district and by species, so check your own bye-laws before you trust a date here. Where the admin goes at each step is in the last line of each month.
January: renewals
The year starts with the list. Last year's members, and the question of which of them are still members. Reminders go out, cheques come back, cash arrives at the first meeting, and the list is out of date before it is printed.
This is the single heaviest month for most secretaries and the one that decides how the rest of the year feels. A clean list in January means a clean AGM in the autumn. A muddled one is chased until March.
Where the admin goes: reminders that send themselves, card payment against the member's own record, and one list that is right. We wrote about why we stopped taking renewals by cheque.
February: the stamp, and the fees
Postage goes up in February, and with it the cost of everything the club posts: cards, notices, the AGM letter. It is also when most clubs fix the year's subscription and permit prices, because the season is close and the insurance renewal has arrived with a number on it.
If your club still prints and posts membership cards, February is when you find out what that costs. Ours was several hundred euro a year for 260 members before the postage.
Where the admin goes: digital membership cards that renew themselves, and a membership year that ends when the club says it does, not when the printer delivers.
March: the season opens
Brown trout seasons open in February or March depending on the district, and the first weeks bring the questions: what are the rules on this water, is the car park open, has the fence been fixed. The waters page on the club website gets more visits in March than in any other month, and if it is out of date that is when everyone finds out.
Day permits start selling. If they are sold in a shop or from a box on a gate, this is also when the club stops knowing who is on the water.
Where the admin goes: waters, rules and season dates that come from the same record the secretary keeps, and day permits sold online, so the club knows who fished and the money is in the club's own account the same day.
April and May: applications, and juniors
New members arrive with the good weather. Applications come in through the website, or a form, or a word at the water, and the committee has to decide. Somebody has to keep the list of who applied, who proposed them, and what was decided.
Juniors arrive with their parents. Under-16s need a parent's consent before the club processes their details, their photos need separate care, and messages should go to the parent. Most clubs know this and most clubs' spreadsheets do not.
Where the admin goes: an application form that reaches the committee, a vote that is recorded, and a junior process with consent built in. GDPR for angling club committees is the short version.
June and July: the water
The quiet months for the secretary and the busy ones for everyone else. Low water and warm nights bring the question a committee dreads: should we ask members to stop fishing, or switch to catch and release, and on what evidence?
Most clubs make that call on a hunch and a phone call. We built a monitor for our own river so the call could be made on a reading, which is a story for another post.
Where the admin goes: not much, and that is the point of getting the other months right.
August: competitions and the calendar
Match days, cups, the club's own competitions and the ones it enters. Results need recording and, ideally, publishing, because a results page is the thing members actually look at on a club website. It is also where the club's history lives, and the reason a competition page from 1987 still matters in 2026.
Where the admin goes: fixtures, results and cups on the club's own site, entered once and published.
September and October: the season closes, the AGM looms
Most trout seasons close between the end of September and mid-October. The AGM follows, and the AGM needs numbers: how many members, how many renewed, how many new, what came in from permits, what went out on insurance and rent.
A club with a good list answers those in an afternoon. A club without one spends a week reconstructing them from bank statements and a cash book.
Where the admin goes: a member count and a permit total that are right on the day, and an export the treasurer can hand to whoever audits the accounts.
November: the AGM, and the officers
Elections, and the handover. A new secretary inherits the list, the passwords, the email account and whatever the last one kept on a laptop. This is the month clubs lose things.
The one piece of advice we would give any club: the records should belong to the club, not to the person who kept them. If the secretary stands down and the list goes with them, the club had no list.
Where the admin goes: the roles change hands in the admin, and the records stay exactly where they were. The new officers appear on the club website without anyone rebuilding it.
December: the letter, and the next year
The renewal letter goes out, or the renewal email does, and the whole thing begins again. The difference between a good year and a hard one is decided here, by whether the list the letter is sent from is right.
Where the admin goes: the reminder is already scheduled, and the secretary has December off.
What the year is really about
Every month above has the same thing underneath it: does the club know, right now, who its members are? Renewals, cards, permits, juniors, the AGM and the handover all get easier or harder depending on the answer. That is why we started with the list, and why every other feature came second.
We built Tadpole for our own club and other clubs asked for it. Seven clubs are live on it now, with three more onboarding.