Opinion Piece – Shouting into a Vacuum

All is not well with Anglers

Mark Williams doing what anglers do best – keeping a watchful eye on the water

For most of us who’ve been around a few decades, the main symptoms are increasing frustration that, despite all the talk, coarse fishing is still suffering from the old threats and with new ones coming along every year. And we feel we are shouting into a vacuum.

There is less pollution than 20 years ago. Whereas we once saw large-scale industrial pollution, thanks to the ACA among other warriors for fishing we got that on the run. Next it was the legalised pollution by sewage works – a situation which led to the devolution of enforcement from the water authorities – who were both poacher and gamekeeper – to what is now the Environment Agency, in an attempt to get independent assessment of the effluent discharges which were wrecking rivers.

To some extent that worked; there’s still more to be done to bring sewage works up to scratch, and to work on phosphate scrubbing and the elimination of thalates from discharges, but things have improved. On the farming front, we’ve also seen disastrous silage and slurry pollutions waning, and the coshing of the use of permethrins in sheep dip.

So why aren’t the rivers swarming with fish? I think river fishing has improved or at least held steady, but we should have had far greater gains than we have seen, and I believe the blame lies both with the EA and with ourselves.

Despite its remit, the EA still seems powerless to reduce abstraction, and chalk streams and gravel-bed rivers which once laced the countryside remain silted ditches because of groundwater abstraction. At one point we all seemed to accept that the water meadows of old – pasture flooded deliberately in winter, and hatches which kept them irrigated in summer – have a hugely positive effect on angling, wildlife and on supplying the water table. So where are the grand schemes that would reinstate them?

I once rather optimistically believed that the ‘flow management’ canalisation of rivers, aiming to get water as fast as possible into the sea, was a thing of the past. And to an extent I was right; there are more environmental considerations now for ‘river improvement.’ What hasn’t happened is the serious attention we were promised to improve stock recruitment, and at least a part of the reason for that is that angling is as disorganised and powerless as ever.

Who remembers some experimental work done on digging pools next to rivers, connected by small channels? The idea was that the summer’s fry would have somewhere to go when the river flooded, and wouldn’t be washed into tidal waters. We all know places where the fish hole up when the river’s in spate, and the result of the experiments was positive, I seem to remember. So where did that idea go?

We seem to have known the answers to our problems for a lifetime, yet little if anything happens. In the area of improving the water habitat, our government is weak. But of course it is OUR government, and if the angling lobby joined forces with the environmentalists with one, loud voice, I have no doubt more WOULD happen.

Instead, we are mired in petty squabbles which ensure we never arrive at a common theme, the environmentalists wary of our sporting agenda and the vociferous minority who either hijack angling to pursue commercial aims or, through pursuing peripheral issues, dilute the message.

Angling MUST get itself scientific representation, and that is why I endorse fully the idea of a levy on rod licences of £ 1 (or more) to set up a body which looks at the big picture. I want people who will identify causes which are common to, for example, the RSPB and anglers, get the science right, and forge links with lobbies which should be our allies.

We are all, as anglers, environmentalists. Our sport depends on healthy rivers, and no matter what our agenda is, rivers full of fish that teem with wildlife of all other kinds. The RSPB, for one, knows this and powerful as it is, would welcome a joint agenda with angling. There are a lot of us, and the RSPB knows there is great strength in adding us to their number.

Sadly, we fight like toddlers over the cormorant issue, make worrying noises about the return of otters, dig fisheries which openly pursue a Victorian gamekeeping policy of predator elimination, harangue poor foreigners who eat coarse fish, and what’s more, make these things the central core of our agenda.

So what would my agenda be?

• Reduce groundwater abstraction by 50%, with compensatory development of reservoirs, open to everyone
• Improve waterway habitat diversity
• Reinstate water meadows via environmental improvement grants
• Reverse the canalisation of lowland waterways and manage flooding with the ‘washes’ system

Just four things, all of which would appeal to environmentalists across the board. A meeting of minds, if you like.

I’m not saying that the other issues do not matter, but I have a belief that they would lessen in importance if we had more and better places to fish. More space for wildlife, both above and beneath the surface of waterways.