Our wild fish future

Fishing is at a crossroads but if anglers can change their expectations, this wonderful sport will live on

- JOHN BAILEY

ONE OF the great benefits of my position as fishing consultant for the BBC 2 series Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is that I get to spend much of the year on our great game rivers talking to the owners and keepers who matter. The overwhelming consensus is that fishing is at a crossroads and that the future of game fishing must be addressed.

Peter Orchard, keeper at Longford on the Hampshire Avon, knows the number of trout anglers is in decline. “Numbers are falling while the average age is increasing. We’ve got to be flexible in the way we run rivers and be open to new attractions,” he says. This concern comes at exactly the time that the Environment Agency (EA) is bent on limiting the numbers and sizes of stocked trout into rivers, or stopping the practice altogether. This move might be welcomed overall but it is bitterly opposed on the southern chalkstreams, the Test notably.

Simon Cooper, the founder of Fishing Breaks, points out: “The Test has been stocked artificially for nearly 200 years and there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that wild brown trout are harmed. Stocked and wild fish lead largely separate lives and don’t unduly impact on each other. The fact is that chalkstreams like the Test need to be micromanaged, and that demands the money that commercial angling provides. The serious money that anglers fork out for a day on the Test pays for the keepers and the constant care they lavish on it. There are not enough wild browns to satisfy the number of rods that fish the Test and it has been recognised since Victorian times that stocked trout meet the demands and expectations of those who pay handsomely to visit it. Nothing has changed other than personal preferences at the EA and Natural England.”