Barrie Rickards' Angling

New Chairman of the Campaign for Angling

I have just been browsing through the Spring issue of the Countryside Alliance's Campaign Update magazine. As always it makes interesting and highly informed reading. A couple of pages or so deal entirely with angling matters. It is reported (I think by Charles Jardine although one cannot really tell) that Bob James has stepped down from his position as Chairman of the 'Campaign for Angling', the new Chair being Baroness Lyn Golding who is both an angler and a labour MP. It's a high profile appointment and one to be welcomed on all counts. I've never been altogether happy with Bob James' role in the CA and I'm sure he'll be more gainfully employed working full time for the ACA. Quite a few anglers are still opposed to the CA for some peculiar reason and it could be that the ACA are worried about this fact.

The same article says “Plans seem to be afoot to disband the National Angling Alliance… in favour of the Angling and Fisheries Alliance.” I hadn't heard it put this way. Clearly they are worried that the memorandum of understanding they had with the NAA will be dropped. I suppose angling really will get its act together one day, but I do wonder when. I can remember all this idiocy going back to the 1960s. Does it really take half a century. It took me one fiftieth of that time to found, and get working, the PAC.

I see Charles Jardine has sent a letter to many newspapers on the cormorant problem, and very welcome it is too to see this attacking stance. I wonder if he has seen my calculations on this subject, published in Fishingmagic.com? If not, perhaps I ought to send him a copy.

Otters, kingfishers, cormorants and litter bins
I saw an interesting letter recently from one Derek Gamble, on the subject of fisheries and wildlife issues. In it he says “Otters, kingfishers and cormorants - whether fishery owners like them or not - are here to stay to be enjoyed by the majority”. For Heaven's sake, have you ever heard of an angler complaining about kingfishers? I never have. So where does Derek get this stuff? And as for otters the only complaint we have is that the people who re-introduced them should have made sure the aquatic system was up to supporting them. It ain't at the moment, especially with cormorants around.

In discussing environmental provisions at fisheries he says we should “also include adequate access, parking, toilet and litter disposal facilities”. The italics are mine. My question is why? Why do we need litter disposal facilities? We have them at home already and the dustbin men remove our litter once a week without fail. So why do we need anything at all at the waterside? The truth is that we don't. The potential litter at the waterside started life in our own homes, as bait wrapping or sandwich wrapping. It came from our homes, we took it from our homes; and we should take it back to our homes. All of it. Lets face it, the volume is less, and the weight less, on the way home. If we've got the energy to carry it out then we've got the energy to carry it back. Litterbins on fisheries are an eyesore, encourage disease, encourage vermin, and also change adversely the feeding habits of much wildlife, including birds. I remember recently revisiting an old lake in East Yorkshire that I used to fish as a boy. Some fool had put a big litterbin in each swim, and it really looked so ugly that it quite spoiled the atmosphere at what was a lovely water. Damn it, someone has to empty them! It's all so pointless.

I'm sorry to go on about Mr. Gamble, but his letter is really typical apologia that one frequently sees these days: we all have to bend over backwards to please the antis or for fear of offending some section of the community. Sure, lets put our house in order. Having done that, we fight our corner hard. I don't think anyone, any body, knows more about the natural environment in this country than anglers; experienced anglers anyway.

Pike and Pollan
I saw another rather more interesting letter warning pike angers off using pollan as deadbait on the grounds that they'd put the pollan at risk as a species. It seems to me that if you added together all the pollan deadbaits in a season, those bought by anglers that is, it wouldn't dent the pollan population by other than a minute amount. In my own piking I haven't come across another angler using them as yet. All those tons of pollan harvested must be going to some other user than pike anglers surely? Maybe that needs sorting out.

The same writer also said something else that I can at least partly go along with, namely that you catch just as many pike if you use a varied type of deadbait. I can only partly go along with this because my own experience over the last three seasons is that pollan are exceptionally good baits -certainly as good as smelt, on my waters. When groundbaiting for pike (or simply chucking in unwanted deadbaits at the end of the day) it certainly pays to use a variety.

Poaching foreigners
Worries continue about the number of foreign nationals poaching our fish. It seems that in the fens this is going on on a big scale, with large traps and nets, as well as long lines, in widespread use. During the Closed Season our waters are at particular risk because they are not patrolled regularly by anglers. If the general public see what's going on they'll not notice anything amiss. I'm getting reports from all over the fens of such activities and I urge club officials to get out there on a regular basis: early morning patrols and night patrols are both required. Alert people living near your waters. Keep your eyes open for the signs on the bank such as hammered in stakes, hidden ropes, damaged vegetation and so on. Don't inform the E.A. By the time they get there - if at all - the birds will have flown. Inform the police first, then the E.A. The police will not quite know how to deal with it, but the villains will at least be confronted. If you find equipment, then confiscate it, because you know it shouldn't be there.

Anti Co-op?
Here's an interesting one. There was in a recent Carp Talk (issue 504) a report about a newsagent who had refused to stock Carp Talk on instructions from the owners, who happened to be the Co-op, because fishing was a blood sport. There's no confirmation at the moment that this is really the Co-op stance, and their website is rather ambiguous, not mentioning angling except to say that on the Co-op's 28,000 acres of land holdings they do allow 'managed' fishing. So we need to watch this one. I have been a long time Co-op supporter, but if they turn even slightly anti-angling then I'll send them my card back, with a stiff covering letter.