Fishing from boats

I am thinking of buying a small weekend cabin cruiser,possibly moored on the Ouse. Does anybody know how I stand, legally or morally,on fishing the various stretches that I do not have a club card or ticket for.

Legally, the EA controls the navigation (ie charges you for a boat licence...) and the various clubs along the river control the fishing rights, meaning they've got the right to charge for membership/day ticket.

Most bits of the navigable Ouse are very cheap for day tickets, one or two are free fishing.

Some will come along and ask you for the money, some won't.

Ely/Cambridge PAC website has a guide to who controls which bits of the river/elsewhere.

King's Lynn ticket gives you the last few miles down to Denver plus bits of the Wissey and Little Ouse.

All the fishing along any river belongs to someone. You should get permission, but half the time, who's to know.

I was always under the impression that if you fished from a boat the club that controls that stretch of water can not do anything to stop you fishing there, nor can they ask you to pay for a ticket as the club only controls the fishing from the bank. As far as my Club is concerned we lease the rights to fish from the land owned by the land lord. This means that we have the right to charge people to fish from those banks but cant charge people who fish from boats as we have no rights over the water its self.

Oh yes you have and oh yes you can.

The landowner ownes the fishing rights up to half way across the river. This is what he is licencing to your club, ergo you have the fishing rights to halfway across the river.

I know anglers tend to fish the far bank if they can reach it, but that's angler's for you - give 'em an in and they'll take a mile.

----------------

Similarly, you have a stretch of river 'er indoors and I walked on Sunday. Back in the 19th century, an association fished it for 12 years without permission and without being moved off and then claimed the fishing rights as their own through adverse occupation. The land was then sold during the Great War and the present landowner won't allow the association to fish from the land as they'd be trespassing. They can, however, fish from a boat not moored to the land is they would then be over their fishing rights, but only on one side of the river. On the other side the landowner there would chase them off.

Great fun!

Meant to say "give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile."

"..... was always under the impression that if you fished from a boat the club that controls that stretch of water can not do anything to stop you fishing there, nor can they ask you to pay for a ticket as the club only controls the fishing from the bank...."

A group of us looked into this a few years ago when our bank fishing was threatened for reasons I won't go into and we found it is not the case, they own the fishing from their bank to half way across, and while some clubs along the Ouse don't bother enforcing it (or haven't got the staff as they say...), others will.

On the lower river you could move through three or four clubs' waters in a day if you went for a few hours in each spot.

One or two can and will pull you over. There are also issues mooring up to the bank on some bits, obviously you can just drop the weights over the side and plot up if there are two of you fishing out of a 12ft dinghy, not sure how feasible this is with anything bigger.

would that be the case for all rivers though or just certain ones

All rivers really.

I don't know whether or not it's registered with the land registry. Comes from a time before Magna Carta I think.

It's one of those rights you have if your land adjoins the river, but you can sell outright the rights to fish. These days though, whoever bought those rights would expect also the right to access the right to fish. Right? In the case I mentioned before, the association in a sense stole the rights, which is wrong, but right under the law which is why they have the right to fish, but no rights to access their rights.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Complicated, but then the law always is.