Does the Environment Agency even like fishing?

 

Greetings!   As many of you will know I have had two passions in my life, gambling and fly fishing, both of which I have been fortunate to make work as work. Though it is 30 years or more since I last took a pay cheque from the betting industry, I still keep an eye on my old colleagues, with my attention drawn earlier in the week to the financial results (not good) of the international betting behemoth Entain who swallowed up one of my old employers, Coral Bookmakers.   Now, normally I don’t bother with the comments section of a Times newspaper article but for some reason I clicked to scroll down all twenty four. The very last, noting what Entain disingenuously call regulatory headwinds, read:   “… having been involved as a Non Exec in the gaming industry I can categorically state that I have never encountered a Regulatory Authority, anywhere in the world and across multiple industries, which so actively detests their sphere of activity like the UK Gambling Commission.”   I have no idea who the writer of the comment, a L de Medici might be, though I am guessing it is a thinly disguised nom de plume inspired by the 15th century Italian statesman and banker. Well, Signor Medici I could not agree with you more but I can sadly only give you cold comfort in that your industry is not alone. We have our own such authority. It is called the Environment Agency (EA).

 

... but maybe not anglers.

 

There was a time, not so long ago, when the EA was the helpful friend. Want a survey to assess the state of your fishery? The electrofishing team was on hand. What to improve your gravel spawning beds? Free kit was loaned and sometimes even a team to do it. Want to do some river improvement works? A bankside chat, some minimal paperwork and off you go. Weed cutting? The EA had their own boats and skilled operators. Spotted something odd about the water quality? I’ll be there in the hour would be the response to your worried call.   All this, and much, much more has disappeared in the space of two decades as the EA has become increasingly desk based, bureaucratic, process driven and remote from the everyday lives of angling folk. The few things they actually have to do they have contracted out to such bodies as the paramilitary wing of the Angling Trust for fishing licence enforcement and River Trusts who often have values and aspirations that don’t entirely accord with the needs of recreational fishing.   Now, I do not want to throw every EA employee under the bus. On the lower Itchen we have a fantastic guy who is all over the poaching epidemic. Others are helpful and kind but you often get the feeling that they are sinking into the mire that is the EA decision making process or bamboozled by frequent personnel changes – a stint at the EA is a useful CV builder so many young recruits, who I would add are rarely anglers, soon move on. None of this has been helped by the EA eagerly adopting remote working post pandemic. Last year I met with a new member of the Flood Defence team who, three months into the job, was still to meet another member of his team in person!   Ultimately all leadership comes from above and the side lining of fishing as part of the EA brief is amply demonstrated by the Annual Report. In the most recent version, the Chair’s Foreword and the Chief Executive statement, mention angling not at all. The 'What We Do' section is also an equally recreational fishing free zone. In fact, fish do not get much of a mention at all in the 186 pages, largely lumped under the heading of wildlife.   As our rivers become increasingly degraded by sewage, agricultural pollution and abstraction Britain’s 2.5 million anglers deserve one of two things: a seat at the table and a voice within the Environment Agency or an alternative statutory body that chooses to embrace our sport.

 

 

Blue space thinking   Do you want me to tell you what we all overwhelmingly are, according to the latest research? Well, we are white, married or in a cohabiting relationship, with no disability, in employment, with a household income above £25,000, do not smoke but do drink alcohol.   How do I know this, aside from the obvious? It is thanks to a research paper Mental Health and Recreational Angling in UK Adult Males: A Cross-Sectional Study recently published by the science journal Epidemiologia (read it here) that concluded that regular anglers were less likely to suffer with depression and anxiety. It also indicated a clear relationship that the more you fished the better your mental health.   I do not think there is anything particularly ground breaking about this research though to be fair to the scientists most evidence presented in the past tended to be anecdotal rather than empirical. To improve on this, they surveyed  anglers via the social media feeds and emailing lists of retailer Angling Direct and mental health charity Tackling Minds which elicited 1792 responses, only 40 of which (2.2%) were women which is disappointingly low.   However, I suspect the lack of female participation might have something to do with the sampling as the vast majority of the respondents would have come via Angling Direct a predominately coarse fishing focussed business the discipline in which female participation is at its lowest. A Fishing Breaks survey would be more like 8% female participation for regulars and 15% for first year fly fishers.   The paper also usefully pulls together similar research from a 2012 Sport England survey and also from Western Australia which concludes that we fish to relax, whilst enjoying the challenge with a modicum of physical activity in the vicinity of what the researchers call ‘blue spaces’, or what you and I call water.   The one bit of data I did wonder about was the suggestion that we are a band of 1.25 million, so 2% of the UK population. This seems to me low, bearing in mind that around a million fishing licences are sold each year in England and Wales with it very likely that many people, especially infrequent participants, fail to buy one. Likewise, Scotland and Northern Ireland are not included in the licence count and nor are sea anglers, where no licence is required. Add to that a 2015 study that concluded that the participation rate for recreational angling in industrialised countries is 11% one does start to wonder why the UK could possibly be such an outlier. A 2021 report put the value of spending on freshwater fishing at £1.7 billion which, if we are to accept the 1.25 million figure, equates to £1,360 spend per angler per year which strikes me as high representing, as it does, 5% of pre-tax median salary.   So, let us do a bit of math: assume 5% participation (probably on the low side) in Scotland and Northern Ireland with a combined population of 7.4 million. Take the mid-point estimate of regular sea anglers that is between 550,000-750,000. Assume 50% of English and Welsh anglers are non-licence buyers. That brings us to a shade over 2.5 million which feels to me, closer to reality.

 

 

Fishing Cottages 2024  Wake. Fish. Sleep. Repeat. Our fishing cottages and huts are now online for 2024 bookings, with the full roster including the stylish Kingfisher Lodge back for next year plus 2023 Christmas and New Year weeks.   Hemsworth Huts - River Allen, Dorset Three and four night stays with all wild, wading beat. Two huts for one to three adults, plus a tent option.   Ilsington Lodge – River Frome, Dorset Three and seven nights Sleeps six in three bedrooms. Also available for grayling October-March, including and Christmas and New Year.   Kingfisher Lodge - River Avon, Wiltshire Seven day rental with six days fishing. Sleeps four.   Lock Keepers Cottage – River Itchen, Hampshire Three night weekends and full week stays. Sleeps seven in four bedrooms. Also available for grayling October-March, including Christmas and New Year.   Croisy-sur-Andelle - River Andelle, Normandy, France Seven day breaks with fishing each day April-October. Sleeps twelve in five bedrooms.           Top to bottom: Lock Keepers Cottage, Hemsworth Huts, Kingfisher Lodge and River Andelle.   Dogs welcome at all our properties. See full list here or click on the individual links for each property.

 

Quiz   The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter. It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.   1)     What did American oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller achieve on this day in 1916?   2)     What word describes the shape of a rugby ball?   3)     Golf’s Ryder Cup is named after which person?

 

Have a good weekend. Go Europe (with apologies to all my American readers)!   Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     He became the world's first billionaire. 2)     Ellipsoidal 3)     Samuel Ryder, a successful English garden seed entrepreneur, golf enthusiast, and golf promoter who in 1926 conceived the idea for a match between British and American professional golfers and donated the gold Ryder Cup trophy that will be presented in Rome on Sunday.

An English Journey (with a bit of Wales)

 

Greetings!   I am sitting in the cool writing this, on the hottest day of the year, at the round table at the very centre of Charles Cotton’s Fishing Temple. The oak doors are open. Outside we are on the cusp of autumn, that moment when leaves start to turn from pliant green to brittle brown. The fall is still someway off but, despite the unseasonal heat, you can sense change in the air.   A blackbird is my sole company his melodic, whistling call percolating into the stone room, For the most part he observes me from a nearby bush but, every so often, he alights to the triple tier of the entrance steps to get a better look at me, cocking his head sideways, to pretend with some birdlike deceit that he is not looking at me. We both know he is.   I would also like to pretend that my moment was an exact facsimile of when Charles Cotton and Izaak Walton both communed in this very building, built in 1674 by Cotton, a large and wealthy owner in these parts of Derbyshire, to celebrate their combined love of fishing. By this time The Compleat Angler, originally published in 1653, was already into its fifth edition, with the original thirteen chapters expanded to twenty one with Cotton adding the fly fishing sections. It would go on to be the second most reprinted book of all time behind the St James Bible.

 

Cotton's Fishing Temple on the River Dove

 

Unfortunately, 21st century intrusions make it hard to exactly replicate the days of our angling forebears as, at 90 second intervals, at twenty five thousand feet the engines of huge aircraft bound for North America scream as they execute a sharp and rising turn to the west. I stand up to close doors, the heavy, cast iron hinges swinging the thick wood into the stone frame with satisfying precision. The blackbird gives me a dirty look as I do so but the closure does the job; as I return to the table three and a half centuries of silence envelop me.   ‘Study to be quiet’. So wrote Walton so I did just that within the four walls, each as thick as your arm is long. The Temple is a perfectly square building. Not huge at maybe fifteen feet it each direction covered by a steep, four sided roof which is ‘tiled’ with slates hewn from the local limestone rock topped by a fish weathervane on a square pillar with a sundial on each face etched with the intertwined CWC initials of Cotton. Inside it is surprisingly bright and airy, with the rafters exposed to the full extent of the tall ceiling and similarly tall stone mullioned lead light windows in every wall. The floor is worn by age and use, but the square stones still sit in the regular fashion as dressed by those masons so many centuries ago. In one corner sits an open fireplace, spilling out ash with a surround, again stone, that sports the CWC motif in each corner.  Are we exaggerating in calling this a Temple? I think not. It is a temple to our sport that has survived wars, plagues and insurrections. As Tennyson wrote of streams, men may come and men may go but I go on forever. Such is our pursuit of fish. I hope sometime in the late 24th century, another three and a half centuries on from now, an equally daft but dedicated cohort such as our own will still sit in wonder at Cotton’s Fishing Temple.     Walton & Cotton   This Editor Notes: This piece was originally destined for my Trout & Salmon column. However, in the early evening last Friday I had a call from the editor Andrew Flitcroft. Now, late calls usually mean one of two things: you’ve missed the deadline or someone is threatening to sue. I have had both.   However, this call was of the third type – you’re fired! Now to be fair to Andrew when Trout & Salmon changed hands earlier in the year, I said that if a columnist cull was required, I would willingly stand aside; six years and 71 columns being a fair crack. Well, if you put your head in a noose expect to be hung and so, as the magazine ‘is going in a different direction’, the trapdoor was released from beneath me.

 

 

Temple Catch Record Book

 

 

An unlikely place for a chalkstream   My visit to the Temple was part of a triangular road trip to the outermost reaches of the Fishing Breaks empire which started in the Yorkshire Wolds at Driffield Beck.  The flat, farming landscape, more akin to the fens than the southern chalkstream landscape always strikes me as an unlikely place for a river as lovely as the Driffield Beck which you can make sound even less appealing by pointing out that it is a tributary of the River Hull, eventually spilling into the Humber Estuary.     Andrew Dixon - Mulberry Whin owner   But north-east English caricatures aside, if you did not know any better you could easily mistake it for Hampshire’s best – clear, fast and with a verdant growth of the all-important ranunculus in quantities I have rarely seen anywhere else in recent years. As I looked at it with owner/farmer Andrew Dixon, the second generation custodian, I could not put my finger on what was wrong. It was only after we had walked almost all the river that I twigged what was missing: the wretched blanket weed which is an unwanted feature of most rivers by late summer, that straggly, filamentous weed that thrives when flows reduce and the phosphate count shoots up.  Of course, there is a downside to all this good weed – it needs to be cut. Andrew, ever the resourceful Yorkshire farmer, has eschewed one of our fancy southern weed boats for his own dingy, battery powered contraption. He tells me it is his favourite thing for a summer 4am start to whirr up and down the river, with a flask of coffee, taking in the dawn until the batteries run out and the farming day kicks in.

 

 

 

Where are you Mr. Barbel?  From east to west the various contortions of the M6, M54 and A49 took me to the border with Wales and the River Wye to meet my old friend John Bailey who was taking a few days out from filming the sixth (or maybe seventh I lose count ….) series of Mortimer & Whitehouse Go Fishing.   I am sure you all know it by now but from the outset John has been the Fishing Consultant to the series. It is he who scouts out the locations and lines up the fish (or not!) for the camera. It has now really become quite the operation, with each episode requiring a three day shoot and a crew of eighteen, plus reconnaissance visits by John and the production team.  But I was not there for any of that but rather a catch up with John and the chance to fill in a blank of my record book with a barbel. John has three lovely sections of the Wye just above and below Hay-on-Wye. This provides him with the chance to boast that he will catch you a barbel before lunch in England and another in Wales after lunch.     John Bailey   Sadly, we only had time to fish one swim on one section and I was to be denied any sort of pre or post prandial barbel with just Mr Chub coming to visit my boile* in the twenty minutes we actually spent fishing before the midday sun, on the second hottest day of the year, drove us off the river and out of our waders with me heading home and John to more televisual creations.  *John has a particular dislike for the term ‘boile’ and offers a prize (as yet unspecified) to anyone who can come up with a better name. John also has some insightful thoughts on canoeists, kayakers and rafters which I will bring you in the wider context of wild swimming and other rivers next time.

 

Quiz   The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter. It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.   1)     What is a gimmer?   2)    Who landed on the Galapagos Islands on this day in 1835?  3)    How long is the English/Welsh border? a) 120 miles b) 160 miles c) 200 miles d) 240 miles.

 

Have a good weekend and enjoy the rugby whoever your team might be.    Best wishes,

 

 

Simon Cooper simon@fishingbreaks.co.uk Founder & Managing Directorwww.fishingbreaks.co.uk

 

 

 

Quiz answers:   1)     A young female sheep, usually before her first lamb. 2)    Charles Darwin 3)    160 miles