Strong lobbying in the right places from a professionally organised representative body .
Absolutely, since that's the norm for other interest groups competing for attention and influence.
One of the leading campaigners in the run-up to the lead shot ban came from the city I was living in at the time. Generally regarded as The Mad Swan Woman, her publicity, sentimental about swans and unreasonably aggressive towards anglers, nonetheless fed into the ban. It was not diluted, apparently, by the facts that anglers do not shoot quantities of shot into the environment, nor were there many anglers on her local river, as it barely contained fish at the time. Not long after the ban, in an unrelated but ironic postscript, I was reading articles about the destruction of small waterways by gangs of teenage swan hooligans - a series of warm winters meant far more survived than some waters could support . Meanwhile we were trying to squeeze expensive pieces of hard metal and a range of useless substitutes on our line.
The hooks in the mouth business......... It can't be denied, and it's not a PR gift for angling. We do need a good, positive story about angling. What that story might be is elusive and incoherent, and will be as long as we anglers continue to argue with each other more strongly that we represent our sport/pastime to the non-anglers. In fishing, the Judean Popular Front are still locked in dispute with the People's Judean Front. Meanwhile, I notice more and more waters controlled by local authorities being designated Conservation Areas, and fishing excluded. At the same time, despite a tendency in some quarters to throw a little hissy fit about liberal leftie urban do-gooders, research and understanding of "sentience" is only going in one direction: extending and deepening our insights into the unexpected and hitherto ignored depths of awareness, intelligence, communication etc etc of what we used to think of as dumb animals and creatures of the lower orders.
A positive story about angling has to be able to face any uncomfortable truths and still assert that overall it a good thing. I can't honestly claim my catching individual fish in no way stresses them, damages them or spoils their afternoon, but there are good arguments why the activity is good for fish in general, tends towards valued and cared for water environments and, compared to many people's idea of fun, is highly positive for people and society.
This post is going on, even by my standards, but here's a comparison based on angling, politics, conservation etc in neighbouring cities. I live in one where fishing on council owned waters is banned as incompatible with conservation values. There are angling clubs, but the focus is inward, and old school, nothing much goes on, and waters are what they are. Council ones are visibly unkempt and left to their own devices. In the city next door, an angling club partners the council in managing and developing the waters. Park lakes have been transformed in all terms, fishing and environmental, with water treatments, plantings, tree prunings, margin clearing etc all based on fishery expert input. The club's river stretches are among the best I've ever seen, in terms of litter-picking, access, sensitive clearing of swims etc. The club is high profile, supports charities, organises teach-ins for youngsters and family/community events, with voluntary input from members and great communication. They have made themselves popular and thought of as a force for good on all levels.
