SWS Fisheries

Empowered members to manage their own memberships via the Clubmate App, streamlined internal operations, provided the tools to improve member communications.

Working in close partnership with our sister company, SWS Countryside, SWS Fisheries doesn’t just offer the best fishery management across our venues, but also develops the best environment around our lakes, for our fish stock and nature to thrive.

We’re privileged to be able to offer five unique fisheries situated within the heart of the Kent Countryside, ranging from an intimate shallow 6-acre venue, right up to one of carp angling’s most mysterious waters: a 45-acre gravel pit with depths of 30+ feet. 

SWS offer specimen fishing for more than only carp anglers; we have some of the most prolific tench waters in the South East of England and great predator fishing with most anglers bagging multiple 20lb pike in a season.

Before Clubmate, running the fishery was stressful, time-consuming and inefficient. We used a management system that was designed for use across many different industries, but since the angling industry runs slightly differently, that made it harder to use. It would generate PDFs for me to print out, cut out and put into a self-laminating pouch. Going through that process for every angler at the fishery just wasn’t sustainable. 

Communication is key for us, so we tried using MailChimp but it wasn’t entirely successful. Most of the time our messages ended up in spam folders and so key information got missed. 

Our ability to grow the fishery was limited by the amount of admin we could handle, which was incredibly frustrating.

We wanted to use a management system that would help us grow the fishery more effectively and streamline things internally. Having the ability to manage memberships via an app would save a lot of money on admin, not to mention time.

If I’m honest, we didn’t do much research into other products on the market. We were sold quite quickly once we’d had a demo from one of Clubmate’s representatives. The fact is, their software offered solutions to everything we wanted and more.

My only concern in getting started was over how well our members would take to the change. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to use Clubmate, but members have been used to the fishery doing all of the work for so long, I was apprehensive about how they’d respond to using an app to manage their own fishing experience.