In response to your comments, which we thank you for – any comments, are good because it is good to get our members opinions.
I am sorry that your impression of the Pride of Derby is not very good and that you were miss sold your ticket. The advise from bailiffs is obviously a personal thing – they mostly have loyalty to our club and know of the history between our club and the Derby Railway.
The issue of not being able to find pegs on popular waters is not new – 40 years ago the problems were on the canals which at the time were so popular you could not get a peg unless there before 5am. Then 20 years ago it was the River Derwent at the firework factory and then the Trent near to the Long Horse Bridge. What I am saying that as a club we cannot anticipate and select members on the basis to their needs. This is up to the members concerned if they feel they cannot get the particular water of their choice with the ticket on offer then they must make the choice to find another club that will give them the fishing experience they want. Hence the turnover of anglers joining and leaving the club – I must say though that many of the anglers who leave the Pride join again within two years.
It may surprise you that the core membership of the club stays with the Pride for 30 and 40 years plus so we must be doing something right and the pricing policy is not set for carp anglers only – we have to set a price which is affordable and sustain the clubs coffers for the improvement which we try to make year on year.
The pricing policy you suggest may suit the carp anglers but would exclude the reminder of our members who prefer to have the diversity of fishing which the Pride has on offer.
Your point of the lack of fish in the Grimleys pond has caused concern to us as well – we have stocked this pond on many occasions and within a year most are gone – it has a massive stock of small fish but we fear most of the bigger fish are lost in predation by cormorants or be lost in the flooding ( I would though dispute your figure of flooding for five months per year) we have control over many things but for rain we cannot control.
The premium ticket has been a massive success – most of our premium members love it. Before this ticket came into being we had constant disputes on the two lakes (Pride and Olvers) now both are well managed and because of the popularity of this ticket we have a significant waiting list. It looks from your mail that you are on this waiting list – but again I dispute your figure of being told each year that you have moved up the list by 250 places – we have a waiting list but not one of 750 which equates to your three year wait at 250 per year.
The only way we would keep every one happy on the lakes is issue a new ticket say “premium plus” and sell a quantity of tickets that equates to the quantity of pegs available and divide it by the monies required. The price would be approx. £1,100 per year and this would exclude all of our existing members including pensioners and juniors.
There is no way I would be party to this sort of organisation what I want and the remainder of the Director’s and members ( shareholders) is an inclusive club for our ticket holders that caters at a reasonable price for all anglers and angling interests – river –canal pond and lakes.
If this isn’t for you then I am sure that here are many clubs that might interest you but we have no plans on changing our processes and organisation
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