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.”
Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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