GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY That dreadful fellow Richard Walker recently had the effrontery to suggest that officials of angling clubs were too old for the job – or, rather, that many more youngsters ought to be involved on the committees. I remember saying much the same thing a goodly number of years ago. I was speaking to the NASG at the time and was urging them to get involved with club committees. There is a number of reasons why Walker is right, why too many men over the age of 55 are a bad thing for the angling club, and a bad thing for angling as a whole. Just recently a very serious angling administrator said to one of the PAC officials that recent NASG representation on the British Record Fish Committee had been a dead loss: they just sat there and said nothing, wearing expressions which betrayed their feelings; that they were sitting in committee with a bunch of old fogies and has-beens. One can have some sympathy with both viewpoints and I’ll explain why. Obviously it is disappointing if a youngster says nothing and contributes nothing. On the other hand do the older hands have much justification for their oft repeated claim that they are the experienced ones? Let me answer that question with a number of stories, and then work around to what I think the true situation is today, what we should do about it, and why. What we do could be vital to our sport. Many moons ago, as a youngster living in the village of Hook on the borders of the East and West Ridings I belonged to what was a junior specimen group (the Hook SAG no less). Now this was before the NASG was formed, and if I remember rightly there was only one other specimen group in existence at the time, except the original Carp Catchers which was in a sense defunct. We caught a lot of fish: roach to 2 lb 5 oz, with several dozen over 1lb; upwards of 200 perch between 12 oz and 1 When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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