The Fishing Coach

I can’t emphasise strongly enough how important I think the new Angling Trust is to us anglers, not just coaches but all fishermen and women across the country. Below is this week’s press release which asks us to spend a few minutes completing an online survey. Yes, someone is finally about to ask what you the individual angler thinks and wants. I told you times were changing!

Two things you must do now, join the Angling Trust, if you aren’t already a member and/or register to be part of this survey. If you don’t act now never let me hear you complain about the state of angling again.

For Immediate Release

Wednesday 18th February 2009

—BEGINS—

Sport England Calls on Anglers

The Angling Trust is calling on all anglers who are members of an angling club, and young anglers, to take part in a new survey. One thousand anglers must register for the survey if angling is to be eligible to receive the promised four year funding package of £1.56m from Sport England and any future funding.

Sport England has commissioned the survey to establish what is important to people when they take part in sport and how satisfied they are with the quality of their experience. The survey goes live in March 2009, however we need anglers to register their details now so that Ipsos MORI who are conducting the research can contact them directly.

The registration process takes about two minutes. All personal details supplied will be held in the strictest confidence and used solely for the purposes of this study.

There are two surveys:

one for members of an angling club which is a member of Angling Trust (or which was a member of NFA, NFSA, S&TA): www.anglingtrust.net/clubmembers

and another for young anglers aged 16-18: www.anglingtrust.net/talentpool

For more details about the survey and electronic links to the study please visit the Angling Trust website, www.anglingtrust.net.

Mark Lloyd, Chief Executive of the Angling Trust urged every club angler in the country to complete the survey commenting: “This is an opportunity for anglers to have their say about their experience when they go fishing. The results will help guide our work over the next few years and will affect future funding decisions from Sport England for angling. Please help!”.

—ENDS—

Angling Trust

The Angling Trust is the new, single organisation to represent all game, coarse and sea anglers and angling in England. We lobby government, campaign on environmental and angling issues and run national and international angling competitions. We fight pollution, commercial over-fishing at sea, over-abstraction, poaching, unlawful navigation, local bans and a host of other threats to angling.

As the governing body for all angling, the Angling Trust will seek government funding to develop the sport from grass roots participation through to elite performance. We will develop programmes with clubs to increase participation, particularly amongst groups who have yet to discover the joys of going fishing. We will protect the rights of all anglers to do what they love most. The Angling Trust has been formed from an historic merger of six angling and conservation organisations in January 2009. Other bodies, including the Angling Development Board, will merge with the Angling Trust in 2009.

For more information about Angling Trust: www.anglingtrust.net

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I am writing this post in reply to a comment posted by Weller of the Yard. He states:

“Looks like angling unity have their first fight and it is for Sea Anglers S47 EU Common Fisheries Policy.”

I looked this up on Google because I know little about sea fishing but I could find no references to the exact wording of this section and Les and I both know how important the exact wording of such sections in law can be!

Today I was watching Countryfile on BBC1 and this very thing was the subject of a part of the program. It seems that the EU want to include the catches of recreational anglers in their country’s catch quotas and anglers are worried that if the quota is exceeded then they will not be allowed to fish. This apparently will not apply to shore anglers (at the moment!).

Firstly we must worry about the definition of “recreational anglers”, since apparently in some parts of Europe this covers more than a couple of lads, in a boat they normally keep in their garage, going out to sea and catching a few fish for their dinner with rod and line. This pursuit can hardly be a threat to fish stocks to any extent but it looks like the EU is trying to formulate a very broad piece of legislation to cover everything with the aim of only enforcing part of it as it suits them. This could be a very dangerous precedent and infringe on all sorts of personal freedoms, such as telling you when and where you can fish and what you can fish for.

It seems that the target of this is fishermen who catch fish under the umbrella of recreational angling but sell the fish once ashore in greater quantities than would be normal for the aforementioned two lads. This may well reflect on our commercial charter skippers who I have heard sometimes keep the majority of the fish caught by their customers to sell for themselves. The skipper featured in the Countryfile episode caught a small cod on camera and threw it into a bucket to suffocate and instead of saying it was for his dinner he said it was for the dinner of one of his crew - with the current price of cod in the shops, the cynical old ex-copper in me would not be surprised if this fish ended up on a fishmonger’s slab. A small point I know but we anglers must think more about our public image, we cannot fight this sort of thing without the public on our side. This of course may have been the way the piece was edited and we must be careful about this too, but if you fish for commercial gain then you must expect to be subject to the current commercial restrictions.

As for the definintion of recreational angler, how about: an angler who fishes with no more than six hooks and only keeps fish for his own non commercial use. This could then enable us to claim an exemption from inclusion in catch quotas.

See SACN for more details

One of the great weaknesses of any argument that sea anglers can offer must be that they seem only to be taking from the environment and making very little contribution in return. Now I know that I am being controversial and I admit that I know very little about sea angling but I am looking at this from the same point of view as any other member of the public. Freshwater anglers are seen to pay for the creation of fisheries, the maintenance of the fish stocks and general management of these same fisheries by their day tickets, club or syndicate membership fees. Their National Rod Licence fees fund the Environment Agency who manage the rivers and provide many other services for angling in general and some of us belong to other agencies such as the ACA now called Fishlegal (part of the Angling Trust) and fishery consultative bodies. On top of this we make every effort to return the fish we catch alive and healthy.

This is not meant as a critiscism of sea anglers because I cannot see how any worthwhile contribution could be made to an environment as vast as the oceans whilst they are being raped by the international fleets of commercial netsmen, I am merely pointing out the weakness of your case.

Before my fellow freshwater anglers start to feel superior, just think where all the fishmeal comes from that goes into your groundbait and pellets - it comes mostly from a small sea fish called the capelin which once was a major part of the marine food chain. Salmon parr and trout in fish farms are fed this pellet too!

The one thing you could all do is to join the Angling Trust as an individual member even though you probably already belong to what was the NFSA (if not, why not?) which is now part of the Angling Trust. The more members they speak for the louder their (our!) voices will ring in the corridors of power. The Angling Trust is already fighting against this piece of legislation on our behalf, you can give them more power to make our voices heard in Europe.

How many bird watchers do you know? Would it surprise you to hear that the RSPB is the most powerful conservation group in Europe? This is because bird watchers are not afraid to put their hands in their pockets every now and then to support their hobby and this gives the RSPB power to protect their interests.

If the Chief Executive of the Angling Trust, in the near future, could say to Government that he represented two million anglers his voice would carry more weight and our wishes would be taken into account, because what political party could ignore two million potential votes. It really is up to you, all of you, coarse, sea and game anglers alike, to join the Angling Trust - get your voice heard or stop complaining and watch our sport die!

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