As many of you will be aware, the Angling Trust is a body recently formed from the Anglers’ Conservation Association (now known as ‘Fish Legal’) and the various other UK angling organisations like the National Federation of Anglers and the Specialist Anglers’ Alliance.
The result will hopefully in the long run be a strong organisation dedicated to the task of fighting the coarse and sea fisherman’s corner and representing us effectively, not least with politicians and parliament. I say ‘hopefully’, because as many of you will be aware, there are many threats to angling in the UK, and they are growing. These vary from the nutty vegans and animal rights activists who want to ban us to competition for space from other recreational interests. Anglers are increasingly fighting other water users for resources.
But by far the greatest threat of them all to fishing is the enormous apathy of coarse and sea fishermen themselves. For as long as I have taken an interest in angling politics, and that is for more than forty years, anglers have acted as if they wanted to vote themselves out of existence. They have consistently refused to vote money in support of angling organisations, have ignored, or simply been unaware of, the many threats to the sport and generally reacted by sticking their heads in the sand.
Those of you who love to fish rivers may or may not be aware that the British Canoe Union is once more mobilising its resources and contacts in Parliament to gain access to the whole of the UK river system – virtually on its own terms. Amazingly, this has not had much of a mention in the angling press, as far as I am aware. But it has featured in the national press. The canoeists have not been slow to put their case. And how many letters from anglers have we seen? None.
And the non-angling general public is likely to be sympathetic to the canoeists’ case. Especially after watching the BBC’s ‘Rivers’ series, with that nice Griff Rhys-Jones repeatedly plugging the ‘right to roam’ argument. And if the general public is sympathetic, the politicians will follow looking for votes.
The Angling Trust has recently been very active on the canoe issue on a number of fronts: mobilising political support in order to get angling the press and the standing it deserves.
This is only one specific example of why we anglers need a tough, professional body to represent us. But we will not have a tough organisation giving us the representation we deserve without more support. Only a pathetic 1% of the coarse and sea fishing public has signed up.
There are many other threats to angling which need to be fought such as fish theft, damaging barrages and hydropower installations. I and the members of a club I was a member of lost some prime barbel fishing a few years ago when a productive traditional weir was replaced with a hydro-electric installation which works on a surge principle and causes the river to rise by a foot for several hundred yards downstream every twenty minutes when stored water runs away. Other things not in our interests are local bans and restrictions, declining fish stocks, cormorants, and of course the old enemies – abstraction and pollution.
Over its long existence Fish Legal has lost only three cases, and has won compensation for its members totalling millions. Some of you will be aware of the relatively recent case of the total wipe-out in 2007 of the River Wandle in Surrey, which had been restored over a period of 15 years to the status of a top-grade urban chalk stream. Pressure was brought to bear on the culprits, Thames Water, who paid out record compensation of £0.5m.
The Angling Trust will also be actively promoting angling as a sport on a national basis, and in particular will be supporting the development of angling clubs. We badly need to recruit more young anglers into the sport, and now is an excellent time to begin, when more and more youngsters are re-discovering the attractions of the outdoors. Most clubs that I am aware of are crying out for new blood, junior members to see the sport into the future. But they are virtually powerless to make youngsters into the anglers of the future without outside resources and assistance: in the shape of the Angling Trust.
I’ve been hammering on mainly about what the Angling Trust can do for anglers. But there’s one thing which anglers can do for the Angling Trust: join, and join now. To give angling the support it deserves.
Visit ‘www.anglingtrust.net’, and/or telephone on 0845 6010699.
Rod Sturdy
