Commercial Fisheries # 1
Over the next two or three articles I'm going to look at developments in commercial fisheries and where they are leading us. In this first article I'll look at overall trends, and then in the following articles whether there is room for improvement, and what the implications are for our river fisheries.
Gold Valley Fisheries
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To begin with we need to define what a 'commercial' fishery is. To a degree it ought to encompass the majority of waters that are available to the fee paying public. So club waters with open membership are at one end of the scale, through club waters offering day tickets, private waters offering tickets, through to purpose built multi lake waters as the ultimate of this type.
Generally though it is the purpose built waters open to all that are thought of as this type of water. It's true that some local clubs may obtain concessions for their members, and many such waters are booked by clubs for their matches. Such waters mostly have some form of facilities available at the water. Car parking is the essential one but this may be supplemented by toilets, tackle shops and cafes. The twin secrets to the success of such waters are the convenience - no long walks, awkward banks or overgrown water, and the fact that the fishing is easy.
This second point is possibly the most controversial. Easy fishing is obtained through high density stocking. As Graham recently found out on a pole fishing session, after the thirty-seventh carp in just a few hours it gets monotonous. That high stock density can lead to problems especially during heat waves or post spawning. The extra stress of spawning makes the fish more vulnerable to disease.
(I visited a local commercial to try out a margin pole and caught carp to around 9lb. It was so ridiculously easy I went home after four hours and 37 carp. They just queued up to climb on my hook. It was great for the first couple of hours and then it just got monotonous. There were anglers fishing it that went at least once every week. Good luck to them, but it wasn't for me; I'd much rather catch one or two hard won fish - Graham).
But I have noticed another change in how we tackle commercials in the past few years. Initially there was tremendous novelty in being able to catch plenty of small carp. For anglers like me, reared on rivers and relatively tough club stillwaters stocked with mainly small roach, it was a revelation to fish waters holding so many carp. Such waters did exist in the past but we were restricted to one or two visits a year to these 'special' waters. When we did start fishing commercials and the like for carp we found that our ultra fine match tactics were inadequate. We needed stronger rods, heavier lines and better hooks. Our baits were unsophisticated too, as we stuck to maggots and casters.
Initially many of the carp we caught were small, fish up to a couple of pounds. Sometimes better fish were present, and some anglers tackled these with what might be termed 'Avon' gear. An Avon rod and six pound line coupled with bigger hooks and big baits such as sweetcorn or a cube of luncheon meat coped better for fish to around six pounds.
Small carp for stocking were cheap, and some new waters were dug and stocked with thousands of these carp tiddlers. For match anglers used to struggling for a pound such venues were a welcome change. Match anglers didn't mind that the fish were small. With the knowledge that small carp would soon get bigger it seemed that commercial fisheries had found the answer.
The result was a mass migration from our rivers by match anglers. The rivers were largely perceived as finished off by cormorants, and the convenience of the commercial fisheries weighed heavily in their favour quite apart from the easy fishing.
As the demand for commercials gathered pace the waters themselves expanded, digging more lakes, and improving facilities such as onsite toilets, cafes and tackle shops.
Shallow uniform waters are tailor made for pole fishing but the poles available fifteen to twenty years ago were designed for ultra fine fishing. They were slim, lightweight and fragile, and only suited to elastics up to a size eight. This was fine for carp to a pound or two but as the carp started to show at bigger weights it quickly became obvious that much stronger poles would be required coupled with stronger elastic and a different design of poles. In the last decade poles rated for size twenty elastic and more have become widely available; indeed match poles are now in the minority. Power top sets that easily accommodate much thicker elastic, larger Stonfos, stronger floats, and purpose made hooks for using pellets have all made the task much easier.
The situation that I've just described is what many anglers perceive as the current situation on commercial fisheries; dominated by pole-wielding match anglers fishing pellets for small carp. It is certainly the case on many waters but not all, and it is the latest developments that I want to explore.
There are several reasons why the situation previously described is changing, and will continue to change.
Firstly the appetite to catch carp, especially bigger carp, seems unstoppable. That means that purpose-built carp fisheries are unlikely to go away in the near future.
Secondly, match fishing has been steadily declining for three decades; those that fish matches are generally the same anglers that were fishing matches twenty or thirty years ago, the problem being inasmuch as maintaining attendances that young anglers are much less likely to follow a match fishing angling career for want of a better term. So as the anglers age, and some drop out, the match attendances decline. One of my local clubs now gets better attendances at its veteran's matches than its club matches. Declining match attendances meant that to the commercial fisheries owners a drop in income, and as these fisheries often charged less for a match peg than a day ticket, matches are only financially attractive if selling far more match pegs is achievable.
Thirdly, there was no doubt that the carp in many commercial fisheries were, and still are, getting bigger. This depends to a degree on the amount of space for the fish to grow - bigger waters help, and also the strain of carp stocked. Some of the mirror carp strains are very fast growing. Good examples of this are the British Waterways reservoirs such as Clattercote, Drayton and Boddington, and also well known waters such as Gold Valley and Willow Park near Farnborough. In all of these cases, and there are many lesser known ones, double-figure carp with an increasing sprinkling of twenty pounders are commonplace.
Neil Maidment battles with a double at Gold Valley
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The fishery owners noticed that not only were match anglers adopting mainstream carp tactics as well as adaptations of their own, such as the Method feeder, but also that the pleasure anglers were following suit. Multi-rod set-ups and long sessions had come to the commercial fisheries. Such tactics need more space on the bank than the float anglers. A four foot square is inadequate for the multi-rod set-up with the angler reclining on a chair.
As requests to fish all night sessions with multi-rod setups grew, preferably without having to make way for a match at some point during a weekend, the fishery owners spotted an opportunity to make more money. Gone were the days of a fiver day ticket in many cases. Why not charge per rod and extra for an all night or twenty four hour session?
At the same time those with multi-lake fisheries took a look at what they'd got. Why not sort the carp out according to size and designate a specific (often the biggest) lake to specimen carp fishing? Some fisheries have taken this a stage further and built additional specimen lakes for this purpose. And this brings another revenue earning opportunity - why not charge a premium for the specimen lake?
To summarise this first article:
- Angler's tastes in fishing commercials are maturing - it's no longer just any carp but big(ger) carp tackled with carp gear.
- Sessions on such waters are increasingly geared towards long stay rather than short float fishing trips.
- Fishing such waters is getting more expensive as expectations rise.
In the next article I'll take a short look at how such waters could be improved.
John Huntley
