Kayak fishing at Marlow

Hi,
I am interested to find out what fishing club(s) control the river Thames at Marlow, as I would love to try kayak fishing (lure fishing) there.
Any help is much appreciated
Thanks Joe

Our Woody may have some choice words of advice on that one :wh

You can contact him by clicking his name at the top of this article on Marlowe...

Fishing Weirpools

No need, he's here!

Above Marlow weir it's Marlow Angling Club. Below the lock cut, it's free up to around the cardboard castle then it's MAC again and in the next fields down to Spade Oak, it's London Angling Association. That's on the north bank.

On the south bank, hardly any club has any claim to it, but stay out of my swims in Marlow weir for fear of receiving the odd pouch full of halibut pellets.

Suggest you wait until there's a big MAC (no pun) match on and paddle through all their lines.

PS and if you see a little green boat called Weirwolf with outboard at full throttle heading towards you, paddle like b*ggery. It's me!

However - as long as you neither moor up nor anchor, you should be able to lure fish from the yak without the need to join any club. I think that's right.

..........

geoffmaynard said:

I think that's right.

Click to expand...

Not really. But in parts it's tricky, take for instance the LAA bit I mentioned.

The LAA acquired the fishing rights back in the 19th century by adverse occupation. However, they don't own the stream bed, that (up to half way across) belongs to the farmer who owns the land. In essence anyone mooring up in the stream would be trespassing on the farmers land and anyone fishing there could be stealing the rights of the LAA. Confusing isn't it?

Won't stop me though!

Usually, whoever owns the land adjacent to the river owns the stream bed to half way and the fishing rights above that, but NOT the fish, they are feral. Until they are caught, that is, and then they belong to whoever caught them providing he did so legally with full permission from the rights owner. (It gets worse.) However since the rules of a lot of coarse fisheries state that all fish must be returned you cannot keep it and once it is returned it becomes feral once more.

I once challenged the boss of the EA over this point and - after a rather lengthy and spirited exchange of emails - he finally agreed that in most cases it was a grey area and "only a court could decide". Other areas - where the same farmer owns both banks and the riverbed for instance, it's a lot clearer. But I fell asleep while he was explaining it

I registered the boat last week and sent a cheque for £94 because I thought they'd round the dimensions up to 6 sq metres.

They sent me the plate back and on the note the charge was only for 5 sq metres at £78.30, but no refund cheque. I phoned them and they hadn't done any more like raising a request for a refund, so that would have been it, they would have kept it! Cheeky s*ds.