This long-running club has its members hook, line and sinker.
The Werribee and District Angling Club is celebrating 120 years of recreational and competitive fishing, and boasts a membership across a number of generations, with its youngest member seven years old, and the eldest in their 70s.
While very little is known of the club’s 1898 origins, the club’s longest serving member, Charles Aldersea, remembers a time when the group would meet in each other’s homes.
The club has been based along the Werribee River since the 1960s, when they converted the former Chirnside Park change rooms into their headquarters.
“We built this ourselves,” Mr Aldersea said.
President and life member Chris Abbott joined the club about 18 years ago when one of his neighbours recruited him.
Mr Abbott’s son Daniel also joined the sport and won four junior championships and one senior championship before going on to become a commercial fisherman.
Lila Gray, who has won the club’s women’s championship 10 times, said she got involved through her then-husband.
“As people came in, they brought their wives,” she said.
The club hosts a fishing competition every second weekend, going to a range of river, surf, freshwater and bay locations.
The members’ biggest catches have been preserved by a taxidermist and are proudly displayed throughout the clubroom.
Among them is a 4.935-kilogram rainbow trout that won the state record when it was caught at Lake Murdeduke in 1994.
For more information, or to join, go to bit.ly/2IGg30k
