The largest participent sport/hobby.

This was often quoted as being a truth in regards to our sport. And I have no doubt that many years ago such a claim would have been valid.

However, today it would seem not to be the case, there may be many reasons for this. But where if any would you think the blame lies?

I doubt there are as many people actually play any particular sport as those that angle. Licence sales are 1,210,201 and even though that's 181,000 less than 2010 you just don't get that many people playing cricket or football.
However, junior licence sales are down by about on average 10,000 a year since 2010 so it may not always be the case.

Not too many decades ago we had around 4 million anglers who bought a licence of some description or another.

In those days fishing was probably the cheapest of the available options as a pass-time or hobby.

These days there are just so many alternatives, and money is seemingly no hindrance either.

The popularity of many other sports, driven from the Olympics successes, also competes against angling.

I don't think that there is any one reason that stands our more than any other, but (and I am not having a pop at Carp anglers here) to many newcomers they see Carp fishing as, well, as fishing.

Then they see the veritable mountains of gear and kit that appears to be necessary, which when compare to buying a mountain bike, or similar, seems the easier option?

Just thinking out aloud really . . . .

I think there are many reasons.

More disposable income in a cash, not principle driven society, has opened the door to pastimes that were previously off limits.

I think that with the advent of so much personal media people have also looked further afield and can look into far many other things as alternative pursuits to fishing.

The world is a very different place too, Sundays were a gentle day with little else to do as the shops were all closed and the roads practically deserted on a Sunday afternoon.

Just contrast that to what we have now and the seemingly weekly urge of some to spend the day at their local retail park blowing their hard earned on stuff they never needed in the first place.

Personally, I think that what we have now is even more of a reason to get away from the mad house and spend a Sunday fishing.

I wonder if the lack of quality "family time" is having an effect as my dad would take us off to a river or a lake on a Sunday afternoon and fish which inevitably lead to an interest developing on my part but without that ever happening then who knows?

All things are relative and for the cost of say, a road bicycle,a mountain bike,a tent , a new soccer kit even, a set of quality golf clubs or an airgun you can buy an awful lot of fishing tackle!

I started out buying a rod, reel, line, some hooks and some floats . My first trip to a commercial was with a deck chair to sit on and my golf umbrella which I held between casts. This was only last october!

I do not regret the expansion of my tackle since then. At one of my clubs the average age of members is 60+ and you see youngsters very rarely. Why catch an 8 oz roach or perch or bream or whatever when you could catch a 50lb behemoth! My style of fishing, if you can call it that, is infinitely more enjoyable and rewarding.

I would still say that angling is on a par ( pun intended ) with golf for participation levels. The expense will not put people off. Do your clubs allow a member to take his kids to watch and learn without paying. I am sure the voluminous rules I have read for mine do not. I feel that there are too many rules which can not really be enforced and which will put people off. Some of the waters I fish are harder to get into than Fort Knox even when you find them

Its all about choice. When I was growing up there wasn't really any.....now there are any number of ways in which you can be relieved of your hard earned and angling has to compete with them all....and its failing.

Attitudes have changed too. Unless you are now brilliant at everything [inc your kids] then you are a bad person/bad parent. Expectations across the board have become too high and the idea of a day by the water for the sheer love of it doesn't seem to be something people care about any more.

Even in angling "boasting" rights seem to have become a driver. My PB this My PB that while yours truly potters about simply trying to catch an anything.

Sad really. I don't understand this obsession with putting a number/cost/value/mark on every goddam thing we do nowadays.

A little google research shows that there are a little over 4 million golfers in the UK who play of full size courses.

That figure equates well to the number of anglers from back in the 1960's

I tend to agree with S-Kippy in that these days there is far more choice available the never we had back in the 50's and 60's when Angling was at its height.

I'm sure you're right Skip, wasn't it Oscar Wilde that made the observation ''They know the price of everything, and the value of nothing''.

Peter Jacobs said:

....That figure equates well to the number of anglers from back in the 1960's.....

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That figure of 3.5-4 Million anglers back 'in the day' was based on the number of licence sales - and was hotly disputed even then. Many anglers had to buy more than 1 licence just to fish locally - due to living near the borders of 2 different River Boards. If you went on a fortnight holiday you often had to buy yet another River Board licence.

This was before the days of computerisation and the totalisation and de-deuplication of sometimes scrappily-written counterfoils would have been impossible to use as a basis for accurate numbers.

At least we now have a national system which can give an accurate total - if only to show how many don't renew licences year-on year!

Derek Gibson said:

I'm sure you're right Skip, wasn't it Oscar Wilde that made the observation ''They know the price of everything, and the value of nothing''.

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Yes it was, Derek....and he got it absolutely right. I despair for the sport...I really do. The "all round angler" who fishes for the sheer love of it is on the critically endangered list with no prospect of re-introduction. I'm slightly less rare than a tiger but for how much longer ?

Derek Gibson said:

I'm sure you're right Skip, wasn't it Oscar Wilde that made the observation ''They know the price of everything, and the value of nothing''.

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Erm . . . yes, it was in Lady Windermere's Fan if memory serves me well.

The rejoinder to Darlington though was equally challenging:

"And a sentimentalist, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”



That would make me a sentimentalist then . . . . 'cos I love my split cane rods and pins . . . .

We may or may not be the largest participant hobby but we are the weakest when it comes to new take-up. Does anyone know of anyone that as recently taken up fishing, I don’t? We now live a 24/7 life and shopping is now classed as the largest leisure industry.
My clubs are suppose to have a combined total of over 4000 members they don’t because many of those appear to be members of both clubs so are counted twice and judging by what I see most never appear to go fishing anyway.
The fact is that fishing as we older ones know it is dying out the new breed only want instant success the same as they get on computer games. They get bored quickly and move on.
Unfortunately I am one of those anglers that don’t want too many to take it up especially river fishing because it would spoil their fishing. How many of us river anglers would like to see the banks lined with anglers and our quiet day spoilt.
I go to the river get away from life and I don’t want the maddening crowd to join me.
Selfish Grumpy Old Man I know, but that’s life.

Things move on, very little stays the same.

Whether things are better or worse is often a debate had with rose coloured glasses on. What is for sure is that things are different.

Embrace the future with the wisdom and values gained in the past and contentment is easily achieved.

steve2 said:

I go to the river get away from life and I don’t want the maddening crowd to join me.
Selfish Grumpy Old Man I know, but that’s life.

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I feel exactly the same, Steve and its not selfish at all. Modern Life can sod off.....this is not a practice and I don't have to be permanently attached to a mobile phone or drinking beer to enjoy it.

It's very simple. It was relatively cheap to fish in the 50-60's.

As a council house kid you couldn't even envisage having money for a set of golf clubs or mountain bike.

Now there are so many options available to kids with treats available even if the rent goes unpaid. You've gotta use those £150 Nike trainers somewhere. Even if the exercise is only through a social network connection.

People are richer; Angling (excl fly) was a working mans hobby.

" A remembrance of things past is not necessarily a remembrance of things as they were" Proust!

After 1.00 pm yesterday I was the only one on the lake which has 22 pegs. I was quite happy as I could experiment with different wagglers, the lift method(failed) and filling and using pva bags without fellow members wondering what the plonker on the other side of the lake was doing.

No one saw me getting caught on on some pond lilies in my pursuit of the elusive tench and then the tree above me as the hook, float and weights miraculously came loose with root attached and skyrocketed upwards. Similarly no one saw me catch my best mirror ever of about 9 lb ( those dodgy scales again). It was a stunning fish though and i was thrilled. Caught on the drop before the float even cocked !Hey hum solitude can be nice!

It would have been a perfect afternoon to show a child the ropes and I know, when i was young, I would have thought it great fun

In my own area there is very little free fishing, but I was able to fish a local water for years, day in, day out, without charge and without rules getting in the way of the fun.

Of course, there is the little issue of a media frenzy with regard to child molesters, which means that there are far fewer kids roaming their own bit of countryside, their parents reluctant to let them out of their sight. I don't believe that - as a percentage - there are any more paedophiles than there ever were, and that putting the frighteners on parents has produced a generation of youngsters who are largely disconnected with the natural world. The discovery of fishable becks and ponds during days in the countryside was a precursor to angling for me and is something that youngsters simply aren't doing any more.

Learn,t my water craft fishing a local canal ,cost me nothing back then would send my little brother along the bank asking for any spare maggots ,we would often end up with plenty for a days fishing ,sat on the edge of the canal all day catching whatever came along ,and loved every minute of it .

I reckon that most sports and pastimes don't take too long, even on the busiest of public golf courses you can usually get round in four/five hours.

A bag of clubs and change of shoes, whereas fishing takes a great deal of time, even pleasure fishing, dawn and dusk feeding times, the whole thing is time consuming.

It's only if someone is good at a sport, pastime or hobby that it starts to get seriously time consuming and expensive.

And that is not what most people want or have time to do these days, it's a completely different world now, where everything is instant.

Year on year, the numbers of anglers will drop as another year group pass away.

Look at the average club, the vast majority are over 60 years old, the junior sections get smaller, clubs are folding all the time, leases are being given up and clubs are merging to share water where the rents are too expensive for one club.

When I served on an Angling Trust committee, I asked why there was no reduction for OAP, I was told that OAP are the main funding group and had more money than most to pay their subs ?

Carp fishing is the saviour of fishing and although many don't like, you only have to go into the average tackle shop and the evidence is every where.

Personally I don't mind the numbers dropping, it will not affect me and there is more room on the banks (as others have said), but long term the future is bleak for angling.

Bob

Times change, the population has an increasingly urban attitude and outlook, even if they happen to live in rural areas. Hordes of folks barely step off concrete or tarmac for months on end. I don't consider myself a genuine countryman, but I'm a veritable hedge dwelling bumpkin compared to so many of the media countrymen that proliferate. Fools that venture out of suburbia once in a while to shoot or fish and think that makes them a countryman.mg:

What you had around fifty years ago was the progeny of multitudes of agricultural workers that had been forced, during the industrial revolution, to relocate to industrial urban areas. The progeny weren't born and bred bumpkins, but their dads, granddads and great granddads often were. Those genuine old countrymen passed down what they could to their kids. Those kids did the same with their kids, and so on. We are now at the point where most of that familial understanding of the countryside is lost. The kids are third/fourth/fifth generation urbanites and they couldn't care less that great granddad was a bumpkin that was an excellent hunter or angler, with a good sideline in illicit protein gathering.:wh

All that is before you consider the inadequacies of using licence sales figures as a gauge of numbers. I well recall having two different water authority licences. I was a kid that lived on an area border. Without traveling more than a few miles, I needed the two different regional licences. I've little doubt that there were more anglers back then, but I doubt that there were quite as many as the figures may suggest.

Things are easier now, one national rod licence wherever you go. Which is great, except that I (and an awful lot of others) have two. Are all these counted as separate licences? If they are, the total number of individual active anglers, that actually own a licence, might be surprisingly small.