The Hook and Reel Angling Club

Schooner Crescent, Swartkops, South Africa

Tiger Bay News Special!

Welcome to our world!

On this page we shall endeavour to link to as many angling club web sites as possible, in order for our members to see what and how it is being done in other parts of the world.

If you would like to exchange links, please provide the following text link to us on your website:

Title: The Hook and Reel Angling Club.

Description: Web site of the Hook and Reel Angling Club, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

URL: http://www.hookandreel.org

Email us your particulars and we shall consider a reciprocal link. Please submit only angling related web sites as we shall include only web sites that we consider valuable for our visitors.

Association Roncquoise des Pêcheurs à la ligne

L to R: Kneeling: Antoine LEFRANC, Jean-Pierre PERROUX and a young spectator who asked to be included on the photo.

Middle row standing: David VANDEPUTTE, Fabrice LEPERE, Gaston CREPELLE (with his Kruger Park hat), Gerard DELEBECQUE, David DEBOUVRIES, Jean-Noel LEFRANC, Dominique TIBERGHIEN, Bruno HOUTTEKIET

Back row: Rudy DOUTRELUIGNE, Franck VANDEPUTTE, Bernard DEWAELE (President) Claude VANDERASPAILLE

The first club to be featured on this site is the "Association Roncquoise des Pêcheurs à la ligne", which roughly translates to "The Roncq Association of Line Fishermen".

A good friend, whom we have come to know as a result of this web site, is Gaston Crepelle, who fished the Swartkops River in the fifties, but now resides in the north of France in the city of Roncq. As mentioned elsewhere on this site, Gaston was so impressed by the experiences he had on the Swartkops River, that he also named his home in France, "Swartkop".

On request, Gaston was kind enough to furnish us with particulars of their angling activities in Roncq.

Their Club was created in 1947 and at that time had about 25 members. For quite a long time afterwards, not much happened as the only activities were leisure fishing in the little lake in the City Hall Park.

In 1967, however, a new team took over and Gaston Crepelle became Secretary (the man that does all the work!!) They organised competitions in the lake and soon started to fish in many competitions around the town and even in Belgium. During that time, some very good match fishermen joined the Club.

Gaston became President in 1985 and did most of the work until he managed to find some guys that could take over the secretarial, as well as the treasurer's work. In 1998 he became Honorary Chairman (very nice it is to see other people doing the work!!)

The fishing is only coarse fishing, using long poles (10 meters), floats and very small size hooks (16 to 24). Long and wide keepnets are compulsory as the fish has to be released alive after the weighing in. Scoop nets are also needed as fish up to 3 kilos can be hooked and without scoop nets it would be impossible to land them.

About 5 competitions are organised in the lake open to all members of the Club.

The annual championship is organised in 6 matches :

- 2 in the Park lake

- 2 in a much bigger lake in Belgium

- 2 in a canal in Belgium

The final results are calculated on the best 4 results of each fisherman

The reason for fishing in Belgium is that the fishing licences are much cheaper than in France and if you want to organise a competition along a canal, you don't have to obtain permission from anybody as long as each fisherman has the Belgian licence. (In France you have to obtain permission from the local Club and from the people in charge of the waterways: usually when one agrees, the other one doesn't!!)

Another competition organised by Gaston is a team competition between Roncq and the four cities surrounding it, namely:

Bousbecque, Comines, Linselles and Halluin. Each team is made up of 4 fishermen and the scores are added to get the final results. The Trophy (offered by the Mayor of RONCQ) can be kept by the first team to have won 3 times. Then a new trophy is offered by the Mayor of the winner's city.

Club meetings are held every month (except July and August) and the annual general assembly in January. The trophies, cups and vouchers are awarded then.

The youngest member is 7 years old and the eldest (74) is Gaston, still as keen as ever.

Gaston has agreed to keep us up to date with their competition results, the first of which will be their championship results in November.

If anyone wishes to contact Gaston for any reason related to angling, his email adress is: gastoncrepelle@wanadoo.fr

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Gaston Crepelle fishing the Swartkops River in 1959.

Two of Gaston's favourite fishing spots in Normandy (where he goes on holiday). Very peaceful and very good fishing. Note the tackle being used in the second photo: a long pole (10 m) without a reel, a long scoop net and a wide keepnet.

He writes: "As far as my club is concerned, we have a little lake in a municipal park and people either get a year permit or a daily one and that is where the cash comes in for the club; we also get about 600 Euros each year from the municipality. We have about 7 or 8 competitions each year in that lake, but as we dont want to overfish it, all our other competitions (specially the championship) are in lakes or canals in Belgium. The lakes are private fisheries and we only have to pay for the day. The canal fishing requires a Belgian permit (much cheaper that the french permit) and as we are only about 20 kms away from the canal, its very convenient. All the fish we catch must be kept alive in a big keepnet until the end of the competition and is then counted and weighed. It is then immediately put back in the water."

Pictures of fish caught in the little pond with the trees around. The bigger breams were caught in the big lake.

The final match of the Interville Competition was fished on Saturday, 11 October, 2008, and the results are displayed below.

the first list is the match result (fished in Linselles) and the column TAS shows the peg numbers. The second list is the team results for each one of the 5 matches and the third one is the final overall result for the 2008 Interville Competition.

The last leg of the 2008 Club Championship was fished on the 5th of October in a canal in Belgium and the final result is:

1 - Vandeputte David 9 pts

2 - Lattrez Philippe 11 pts

3 - Robert Dominique 11 pts

4 - Tiberghien Dominique 17 pts

5 - Deketelaere Laurent 19 pts

6 - Doutreluigne Rudy 20 pts

7 - Vanderaspaille Claude 21 pts

8 - Vandeputte Franck 22 pts

9 - Crepelle Gaston 24 pts

10 - Dewaele Bernard 29 pts

11 - Lefranc Jean-Noel 52 pts

12 - Lefranc Antoine 52 pts

etc.....

Number of fish caught

1 - Lattrez Philippe 537

2 - Robert Dominique 286

3 - Crepelle Gaston 246

4 - Deketelaere Laurent 166

5 - Vandeputte David 114

etc.....

Total weight caught

1 - Vandeputte David 38.920 grs

2 - Robert Dominique 18.700 grs

3 - Lattrez Philippe 18.660 grs

4 - Tiberghien Dominique 16.580 grs

5 - Vanderaspaille Claude 14.640 grs

etc...

The Mayors and trophy winners of the 2008 Interville Competition photographed at the prize giving function in the Linselles City Hall.