Close Season Musings

[FishingMagic]

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Close Season Musings

[dangermouse]

Too late Mark, Ron beat you to it

[MarkTheSpark]

You may like to know, Mark, that your views about the closed season lending 'respectability' to angling was one of the late Peter Stone's views on the subject.

Like you, I'm happy to have a lay-off. Tackle dealers will remember that, when the closed season applied to all waters, they got a whole load of coarse anglers buying trout tackle at the end of March so they could scratch the itch.

My local tackle dealer, Sheltons, used to have a wide range of fly gear. With the end of the closed season - and the opening of better shops at Rutland and Grafham - they saw all that trade disappear. They no longer stock fly gear.

So the tackle trade hasn't benefited much from the end of the closed season.

Glad you survived your Grafham mishap, Mark, but I bet that made a bit of a splash....

[Paul Boote]

Inspired by this worthy "Sponsor a Sage-less Fly Fisher" charidee - http://troutunderground.com/wp-conte...blackissue.jpg - Mark, I am setting up a British version - "Normal Fishers Against Sponsored Beings". Sure to be a success.

[mark barrett 2]

Sorry Paul that post has gone right over my head mate!

[Paul Boote]

The message coming from me for the past twenty years (and now coming from some of the best fishers in the States) is "Ponce up and price up a sport / pastime and just watch its participants dwindle and the whole thing bomb.".

[mark barrett 2]

Sorry Paul I may be being incredibly thick, but are you saying that I am advocating poncing up the sport?
If so nothing could be further from the truth.

---------- Post added at 09:59 ---------- Previous post was at 09:54 ----------

Originally Posted by MarkTheSpark

You may like to know, Mark, that your views about the closed season lending 'respectability' to angling was one of the late Peter Stone's views on the subject.

Like you, I'm happy to have a lay-off. Tackle dealers will remember that, when the closed season applied to all waters, they got a whole load of coarse anglers buying trout tackle at the end of March so they could scratch the itch.

My local tackle dealer, Sheltons, used to have a wide range of fly gear. With the end of the closed season - and the opening of better shops at Rutland and Grafham - they saw all that trade disappear. They no longer stock fly gear.

So the tackle trade hasn't benefited much from the end of the closed season.

Glad you survived your Grafham mishap, Mark, but I bet that made a bit of a splash....

Absolutely agree with you Mark. How many times did you convince yourself over the layoff that you needed a certain new, expensive item of kit, the same thing that you wouldnt neccessarily bother with now?!!

We keep seeing everything being branded as "saviour of the tackle industry" carp angling in particular, but in my area were pike fishing used to be hugely popular, along with match fishing, there are far fewer people out by the water in the midst of winter because they can either go all spring when the carp are active or just miss the winter out because they only want to fish for carp. in the old days anglers tended to be more all rounders, fishing for fish by the season not just bloody carpers!

[Paul Boote]

Not you, Mark, far from it, but "The [Angling] Business" which has run so hard, fast and high with its aspiration, destination and branded product for the past couple of decades and is now finding itself with a lot of disillusioned drop-outs and increasingly less uptake by newcomers of the brave new shiny fishy world it so attractively markets. As I was saying on gamefishing sites a decade ago (to almost universal horror), if you encourage everyone to race to the top of the Angling Pyramid but rip out its very base whilst doing so (by pricing up and swanking up and so deterring those who cannot afford to buy the necessary ladders to scale the lofty heights), then the whole edifice will come crashing down.