Well fellow fishy friends, Christmas is once again upon us and I sincerely hope the tackle fairy will be generous come the 25^th! I can hardly believe the year has passed so quickly and it only seems a short while ago I put fingers to keyboard on the last WSF Chrimbo message.

This year I managed to attend the Luce Bay meet with the Scottish WSF Members, an excellent meet organised by Bigads and I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really good to meet up with members who you “talk” to all the time, but have never actually met. Having never been able to attend a meet I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But after the 2 day fish (and beer filled) expedition I can see what the attraction is and why so many of you attend and help organise them!

I say it every year but the meets created through the use of the forum are fantastic, all of which are organised by members who put a lot of hard work and effort into each meet without any help from WSF. It is a testament to the creative spirit and angling camaraderie that exists on WSF that brings together people from so many different walks of life to fish together on a local beach or boat. So a heartfelt well done to everybody who makes these meets happen!

Once again I feel this year has demonstrated the togetherness and the willingness to help other members of the WSF Community. The WSF Members are an extremely generous bunch of people, from a very rough calculation, this year the membership has raised well over £15,000 for various charities and organisations through meets, appeals and auctions. A massive well done to everybody who has been involved in the organisation and the sponsorship of the various appeals and events on WSF throughout the year.

Each year WSF has a small fund for donations to various events and charities in the UK. In 2008 we will pledge donations to the following charities: The RNLI, Cancer Research UK and Sport Relief. If anybody is running a local charity event then please feel free to contact us for any help in the promotion of or providing prizes, we can’t always help, but will try our hardest too! WSF will also continue its membership of the various conservation and angling organisations we are members of.

I can hardly believe that WSF will enter its decade year in 2008! It only seems like yesterday the foundations of the site were built and the site was launched. Whilst WSF launched in 1998, my first internet experience came in 1992 and boy how things have changed! Accessing information is now much easier, connections are faster and hardware is cheaper than ever before– this can only be good for internet angling and encouraging a new, younger breed of angler to get more engaged in the sport we all love. In an age where time is short for many of us, where better to get the latest information on what marks are fishing or for top tips and opinion than online?

Like every community we have our bad eggs, but 99.9% of members are just keen anglers who want to learn or give information to those who are starting out in their angling careers. Overall the future of WSF certainly looks bright with a healthy increase in members each month and a constant stream of posts and reports added each day, the site can only continue to push on and I hope every angler that visits WSF will continue to enjoy the site and more importantly the wonderful sport of sea angling!

2008 will once again be a year for expanding various parts of WSF. The shop will be loaded with more product and brands. The magazine will continue to be tweaked and enhanced so that it provides the best articles, the best pictures and the best video footage we can muster. The forum and community will be loaded with new features and tools, and who knows, we might even bring back the chat room!

The Chrimby Greetings
Anyway onto the thanks and greetings for this year, I’d like to wish all of the other web site owners and Admin staff out there a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Internet Angling will be stronger the more we work together and I look forward to working with many of you yet again over the coming year.

Secondly a massive thanks to all of those angler’s who contributed articles and pictures to WSF over the year, all of your hard work is appreciated and every bit of content you contribute to the WSF Magazines improves it and provides angler’s with more ‘dangling information than they could shake a stick at, so a massive thanks from the WSF team!

Thanks to all of the readers and visitors to the WSF Web Site and to all of those who bother to contact me over the year, your continued support is appreciated and I hope we can add further content to keep you interested well into 2008!

To the forum Members, your continued support of WSF, your contributions and general “angling’ness” are a true credit to angling and your fellow anglers. It is one of the few places where anglers can get a variety of information from all over the UK, Ireland and indeed the World, so a massive thanks for all of your contributions. Also a big thank you to everybody who has supported WSF via purchasing items from the WSF Shop, it really does help to keep the site going and to invest in better technology as and when we need it!

Finally, a special thanks to all of the moderators that work on the WSF site voluntarily without pay. Everyone of the moderators does an outstanding job for what is a thankless task, I really don’t know why you continue to do it with the flak you get from decisions you make, but I’m glad you do! A massive thanks to all of the moderating team for helping to keep WSF Running, I really do appreciate it!

Well, I’m offski, I have been ordered to switch the PC off from 12pm Xmas Eve until Thursday so I have decided an appointment with a pint or two is in order! Once again I would just like to wish all the members, readers and people involved in WSF, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Fish Filled New Year for 2008, Enjoy!

All the Best, Tight Lines, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Mike Thrussell Jnr