Christchurch AC Lose Hants Avon ‘Jewel in the Crown’

[FishingMagic]

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Christchurch AC Lose Hants Avon ‘Jewel in the Crown’

 

[tiinker]

A sign of the times fishing leases are no longer cheap and they are shorter than ever these days. It is a big headache for clubs these days. Even run of the mill waters are getting more expensive . Top line waters fetch top line prices and some one is always prepared to pay it .

 

[mick b]

..............

 

[richiekelly]

A previous post on this subject provides the view of the Somerly Estate.

From memory, it stated that CAC hadn't kept to their side of the lease by caring for the banks and dealing with the litter problem so the Estate were forced to do it themselves.

Certainly, if I was the Estate manager I wouldn't let the fishing to any club, whatever the history behind it.

A closed, and tightly controlled syndicate is the only way to protect a fishery and be assured that it is fully respected by the angling members.

I believe the water is to go syndicate, and from what I know you are correct about the club not keeping to their side, it had as far as I know nothing to do with money, how many have renewed their ticket while being unaware of this I wonder.

 

[tiinker]

A previous post on this subject provides the view of the Somerly Estate.

From memory, it stated that CAC hadn't kept to their side of the lease by caring for the banks and dealing with the litter problem so the Estate were forced to do it themselves.

Certainly, if I was the Estate manager I wouldn't let the fishing to any club, whatever the history behind it.

A closed, and tightly controlled syndicate is the only way to protect a fishery and be assured that it is fully respected by the angling members.

Very true our club water is very well looked after and our landlord has just renewed our lease for another 15 years and it get inspected at random several times a year the landlords staff have their own keys and come and go as they please. So everything has to be just so. Rules are strict and this new lease will take us to 100 years the club has held this water it has always been fenced and private.

 

[richiekelly]

A "special meeting" has been called for 7th March to discuss the Somerly lease.

 

[mick b]

............

 

[Paul Boote]

No comment from me here about this particular matter (though I did have an open invitation to fish Somerley for both coarse fish and very occasionally for "Hand the body over to me, Paul" salmon from keeper Colonel Crow when I was a kid and well into my teens). But then that's how it was then - top fisheries with a handful of rods and countless other lesser waters available for pence or for free to those whose accents weren't right, whose pockets weren't deep enough. The number of the latter you'd see out fishing at weekends was amazing.

The future, though?

Hmm.

The future will be bleak for Angling as done by the vital many (who'll buy all the juicy kit, the floats, the leads, the maggots and pellets, the currently suddenly fashionable soft baits...?) if everything goes big ticket and syndicate -: a very few very well-fished chiefs and absolutely no hollering lads on their coloured ponies to support and defend them and make it all possible.

Not good, except for the few who can buy themselves a little piece of "paradise" then pull up the drawbridge.

 

[floatfish]

Some very good waters have gone syndicate over the years,some for financial reason and many others due to bad management by clubs and hooligan elements causing grief. Farmers being threatened on their own land.!

It's a sign of the times .
Some clubs run waters very well and well policed, these will at least keep
some decent affordable fishing for the majority to enjoy.

 

[Judas Priest]

Nothing at all wrong with syndicated waters, if clubs and individuals choose to either break the rules or not adhere to their side of the contract then losing them is their fault no one else's.

Not all syndicates are based purely on a monetary value but more on knowing who is fishing and when and more importantly knowing you can trust the members.

 

[Paul Boote]

Definitely not about money, some of them. One very reasonably priced trout club / syndicate that I was invited to join after two years of on-bank fishing invitation vetting by its Chairman, a member of the banking family with whom the Royals and most of Britain's and Europe's aristocracy once banked (think Stourhead....) included most of the top brass of the military and the judiciary plus trout-scaring 6' 5", Telegraph / Evening Standard / eminent war historian Max Hastings. Quite a crew.

Very exclusive, yet few members, even back then, were not unaware that our lovely few miles of trout streams could exist in some both geographical and time bubble if all the waters and country around us were being neglected and allowed to go to the wall, and Anglers and Angling of every type going with them - many of those great and good old boys had waters of their own (on a family farm or an Estate) and let them to local coarse clubs at peppercorn rents and handed out the prizes and cups (which they themselves had often donated) at their AGMs and Christmas dinners.

Noblesse oblige (the obligation of the nobility to those less lofty than themselves) is what the above used to be called. I see a lot less of it now (thank goodness - the feudal era is well and truly over), but little philanthropic and constructive from the new breed of syndicated and exclusive club fishers to replace it, to put something back - more worried about the weights of their fish, the beauty of their lightly trodden patch and the company that they keep. A monoculture, in short, surely destined to go the way the Irish potato went in 1845.

Just a few thoughts from me, not holy writ.

 

[nicepix]

So we are back to you again

 

[Ray Daywalker Clarke]

Round here a few clubs have got together to run waters, rather than let them be lost to angling.

The Consortium of clubs is very well run, you just join anyone of the clubs, and apart from that clubs own waters, you get to fish the Consortiums waters that all the clubs run.

This might sound strange to some, but the cost of a club ticket hasn't gone up by more than £5 over the last few years.

many were saying the waters will be over fished, and you would never get a swim. Just the opposite, the anglers I see on these waters are the same faces that fished them before. Yes there are new faces around the waters, but you get that with all clubs.

This may be the way for clubs to go if times get hard.

 

[Paul Boote]

So we are back to you again

And you on me. Get over your online Tourette's, Nicepix - you're clogging up a forum that is going some way towards being one on which fishing of all types can be discussed without fear of attack by some Surly ExPat Troll.

 

[nicepix]

Round here a few clubs have got together to run waters, rather than let them be lost to angling.

The Consortium of clubs is very well run, you just join anyone of the clubs, and apart from that clubs own waters, you get to fish the Consortiums waters that all the clubs run.

This might sound strange to some, but the cost of a club ticket hasn't gone up by more than £5 over the last few years.

many were saying the waters will be over fished, and you would never get a swim. Just the opposite, the anglers I see on these waters are the same faces that fished them before. Yes there are new faces around the waters, but you get that with all clubs.

This may be the way for clubs to go if times get hard.

I think that is the way forward. There are some waters that could be lost to angling without any sad loss, but the ones that matter should be secured even if it means a joint ownership.

 

[greenie62]

Round here a few clubs have got together to run waters, rather than let them be lost to angling.

The Consortium of clubs is very well run, you just join anyone of the clubs, and apart from that clubs own waters, you get to fish the Consortiums waters that all the clubs run......
This may be the way for clubs to go if times get hard.

This sounds like the way to go in many areas - particularly to protect smaller/local clubs and waters from predation by larger clubs to boost their 'catalogue' of waters - and make them more marketable - "...Und morgen die ganze Welt" (... and tomorrow the whole world)!
When the large club relinquishes the water a few years later the local clubs have been dissolved and the RO finds he can't get the exorbitant rent he was happily 'ripping-off' the predatory club for and lets the waters to a syndicate of a few with the money - often stuffing it full of 'firties' - result: loss of fisheries to the many!

It's been happening for years - the consortia outlined by RDC may well be a way to stop it before there's only a handful of 'super-clubs' in the country with large joining fees giving them the financial muscle to outbid smaller 'local' clubs and the subsequent loss of 'local' waters!mg:

 

[sam vimes]

Clubs banding together might work in some instances, but it's not a panacea. There are waters out there that only remain available while the controlling club remains unaltered in any way, or have certain membership rules (e.g. members must live within a certain distance of the notional centre of the club). I know a few landowners that would gleefully withdraw angling consent, sell/lease to the highest bidder, or demand full current market value, should the encumbent club cease to exist in exactly the form that it's currently in. Not all landowners are all about the money. Some might be but are hamstrung by long term legal covenants made by previous landowners or ancestors. There are more than the odd riverside housebuyer round the country that are more than a little bemused to find that the local club has the fishing rights to the bottom of their garden. There are more than the odd xth generation landowner that rues the day that their great grandad gifted rights, or granted rights at peppercorn rates, in perpetuity.

Syndicates aren't universally bad, nor are they always expensive. In some instances landowners accept less income for an expected reduction in footfall. They also appreciate that a syndicate can usually exert more control over who gets to be a member. The fact that they can get a list of names of who is expected to be on their land is also a plus point for them. There are plenty of places that would have no angling access whatsoever were it not for a syndicate.

 

[rubio]

There is free fishing all around the country if you are prepared to fail to catch half a dozen specimen fish every time you go.

 

[Alan Tyler]

"Very exclusive, yet few members, even back then, were not unaware that our lovely few miles of trout streams could exist in some both geographical and time bubble if all the waters and country around us were being neglected and allowed to go to the wall,"

Would you check the logic of this, please, Mr. B.? I think/hope it's missing a negative... I hope it means there was general awareness that your group couldn't persist in a bubble if all around were going to wrack and ruin?
Sorry to be a revolting pedant, but it goes with the name, and your meaning here is central to your argument.

There are bits of free fishing, Rubio, and as a North Londoner I'm aware that I live in a well-blessed area in that regard, but there are also areas without any, and how's a kid to get started if everywhere in bike range is syndicate or big-ticket club?

 

[Paul Boote]

I am a bit of a word pedant, too, Alan, but, as I am not being paid to write, proofread and edit my normally spot-on stuff, I am sure you can forgive a rare slip-up from me on a mere Angling forum.