You have to see the ramps in the states. The Buffalo smallboat launch has 6 ramps in and 6 ramps out and a shuttle service from the parking lot back to the ramps. In the morning that basically means you have 12 ramps to put in on because there is no one around. In the afternoon you get a lot more pleasure boaters but even if they tie up 4 ramps there is still lots of room to manouver. The sturgeon point launch has 3 or 4 ramps as does the Dunkirk launch. Fort Niagara 4 ramps on the lower river. Much better facilities than we have here for the most part.
As far as club size, I think you need 30 to 50 people to be able to get 20 people out to the tournaments(10 boats) to make it worth while. Getting participation out of the members that you have is the toughest part. Some guys just want to join a club to sip a few pops and chat about fishing while others are at every club event and tournament. At our club(niagara) we have been as high as 45 and presently sit at about 35. We have had turn over but there is a core that remains constant. We seem to have the problem of not enough non-boaters so we have few guys that go both ways(boater or non-boater). As was said previously guys transition to boaters usually within a year or two, so we need a constant flow of new non-boaters. Politics for the most part have been non-existent in our club as we have a great bunch of guys that get along.