| MARK WINTLE |
| Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish, tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises. Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular weekly column. |
ROD LICENCES Rod licences? Are they worth the paper they’re printed on? If we scrapped them, would it really make that much difference? Are they just an exercise in bureaucracy that is difficult to justify? I kicked all this around in my mind the other night and the penny dropped that if you did away with them that not much ought to change. There are many facets to this; apart from the money side, there is the question of what we get for our money, fishery regulations, about the differences between the migratory fish licence and the other freshwater fish licence, the mooted sea licence, and a few more besides. It sounds big bucks but…. With the best part of 1.2 million licences sold every year, mostly at twenty odd quid, there’s eighteen million plus for the Environment Agency to spend for the good of angling. Then, there’s a government grant added to that. Look at that figure a little more closely and it starts to fade. The Post Office wants its commission; there are printing and distribution costs, and enforcement costs. So, the final figure is somewhat less. Yet, we as anglers spend far more than this paltry figure on our sport; some sources quote a figure of three and a half billion. That includes licences, club and ticket fees, tackle and bait expenditure, rents, travel and hotels, plus a few sundries that I haven’t thought of. Amongst all of that VAT, corporation tax, rates, income tax, national insurance and other arcane taxes are all levied, so the actual cut taken by the government is far greater than the eighteen million of licence fees. So, point one, in the greater scheme of things, the licence fee is an additional tax that is not that significant. The licence makes sure you are aware of your legal responsibilities… At one time, this was true. Each licence had details of seasons, size limits, net and method regulations, etc. Now, all it tells you is that you’ve got to have one, how many rods you can use, and for whom you must produce it. If you want to find out details of the regulations, you have to contact one of the EA’s offices, not that they truly understand their own complex rules, drafted as they are over many decades. Certainly, it has been my experience that when it comes to complex law regarding rights over fisheries the EA staff are out of their depth almost immediately. Point two is that you are none the wiser regarding fisheries law from obtaining a licence. And while we’re discussing regulations… The interpretation of fishery regulations, even national ones, varies considerably from one region to another. In the Anglian region, I’ve seen legal spring fishing on mill pools directly attached to rivers (interpreted as still water). In other regions, this would constitute illegal fishing. When it comes to local regulations, the picture is far more confused, especially regarding game fishing. Rivers within the same area have different seasons and regulations. Many of these seem to have been devised for the convenience of those of influence. As these fish now need far more protection than might have been the case in the past, I would suggest national salmon and trout (not rainbow) seasons that consider this. I would propose for salmon 1st March to 30th September, and trout, 1st April to 30th September. To those that think these too short I would ask why? Or don’t you want anything to fish for in a few years? When it comes to keepnets, I would suggest the Environment Agency simply doesn’t have a clue. When knotless nets first came in, they weren’t even legal for a while though there was a period of fifteen years when we had excellent nets, and byelaws that were in step (those using carp sacks/barbel tubes might not agree!). But the advent of monofilament nets (in the early 90s) caught them completely off guard and I don’t think they really know that there remains a problem. I could grind a pretty sharp axe on the EA’s sit-on-the-fence attitude to the massive problems caused by cormorants over the last two decades as well… Point three is that regulations ought to be considerably simplified and unified. Then at least if you did have a licence it would have room for the few regulations needed. Game anglers have influenced Environment Agency thinking too much in the past… I’ve mentioned the influence of game anglers. Here in Dorset this once took farcical proportions. True, the game anglers paid much more per capita for their licence but the coarse anglers more than made up for that in numbers. Many years ago, we were astounded to find in our region that game licences brought in £ 3,000 yet coarse anglers yielded something like £ 45,000, but the spending was exactly reversed! As rivers like the Hampshire Avon went down the pan, thanks in part to the policies of those we were paying to look after us, we hardly got the crumbs from the table. A more recent example must be the spending of millions to bring salmon back to the Thames over many years. When this proposed, eminent coarse experts derided this plan, as it was obvious this river would never be suitable for salmon and that the money would be better spent on improving coarse fish habitat. Such advice was ignored. Point four is to remember who pays the piper, and it certainly isn’t salmon anglers in most of England. Coarse licences, migratory fish licences, sea licences… With my coarse licence, I can fish for coarse fish, eels, and brown trout (and rainbows) but not seatrout and salmon. I have asked the EA at Game Fairs and the NEC how I tell the difference between a seatrout and a brown trout as genetically they’re the same (I can, of course, tell the difference, at least most of the time). One clever sod told me they (the EA) could tell from the presence of caesium in the fish from sea feeding (confirming it was a seatrout) but I suggested that an adequate defence in a magistrate’s court might be that I’d left my caesium testing kit at home. This left him stumped, as did my asking how I might classify a slob trout (an estuarine trout that looks like a seatrout but doesn’t quite go to sea). As brown trout and seatrout may both produce migratory and non-migratory offspring (too complex to explain here but it’s to do with not putting all your eggs in one basket to gain evolutionary advantage, and to populate other catchments), there seems little point splitting the difference. Ah, but salmon are different, you exclaim; what about seatrout/salmon hybrids that few experts can tell apart never mind the average angler? As for the sea licence! I fish in Christchurch Harbour. I catch with the same method and bait (floatfished bread), all in the same swim, dace, roach, bream, mullet, bass and seatrout (probably a few other species like eels, flounders as well in time). Exactly what licence would I need? Or will one licence cover everything? It is true that the EA can prevent an angler from fishing by disallowing them from buying a licence though this action is taken very rarely. Point five is that if we all must have a licence it ought to cover the lot, sea, coarse and game (including salmon and seatrout -whatever they are?). The Beautiful Game… You know the one. It involves twenty-two oafs kicking a lump of leather around a field (you may gather I’m no great football fan). Still, each to his own. Football also generates hundreds of millions in tax revenues for the exchequer through exactly the same mechanisms bar one. I don’t need a licence from the Post Office to kick a football do I? Yet, subsidies for football are far greater than the dregs that reach angling. Overall, I would be surprised if the overall spending figures for angling and football are vastly different, and therefore the tax takes are in the same ball park (when in Rome, etc.). So how come football has such mystical significance it can justify hundreds of millions in subsidies that angling can’t? I am being unfair to football, but the revenue from licences could be replaced by grants (I have £ 40 million in mind) that would still be significantly less than that received by football. Point six is that if playing/watching football can be allowed without a licence and the government is prepared to put some of the take back into the sport then why shouldn’t we do the same for angling and abolish the licence? If the licence were abolished, it might encourage more to take up the sport… Think of it. No licence, more anglers, more spending on angling, more take by the government, easily offsetting the increased grant. After all, the EA employs bailiffs to check that you’ve got a licence. Where do they check? On the commercial waters, that’s where. So much for being the guardians of our rivers, most bailiffs won’t even know their way around our rivers any more… One of the arguments for the licence is that at least there is some idea of how many people fish, though quite how relevant that is to anybody is hard to determine. We’ve been claiming four million for years, based on adding half a million every few years. Furthermore, in committing to pay this fee at least we are contributing directly to the benefits we receive from government agencies. This falls apart when compared to other sports, some of which are so minor that the participants can hardly be measured in hundreds, yet receive millions in subsidies. Recently, it has been proposed that a £ 10 fee be surcharged to fund a truly professional governing body for angling, and if it could achieve its aims then I would wholeheartedly support it on top of the licence, though there would be much resistance to such a fee. I know that the Tories proposed abolishing the licences a while back and that Martin Salter MP opposed this (perhaps I should send him this article?). I’ve taken an apolitical stance on all of this. Angling just wants a fair crack of the whip, and I remain unconvinced that the licence in its current form achieves that. And finally… I’ve played devil’s advocate throughout this article. I’m all for more work by the EA but not it being sidetracked in spending millions to check we’ve got unnecessary bits of paper. Remember what happened to dog licences? I hold the British record for having my licence checked – four times by different bailiffs in one day (unless you can beat it!). After this, perhaps the record will be beaten! Next week: Old Coarse Fishing Books |
