WURVS for all...?

The Wye and Usk Foundation

The Wye & Usk Roving Voucher Scheme...

More miles of bank than you could fish in a decade purchasable over the counter, or even better, on the web. And no hassle whatsoever on the bank, just pop your vouchers in the honesty box, and off you jolly well go...!

If only I had this scheme in coarse fishing form operating on the rivers local to me. It would be such a boon.

Couldn't such a scheme be extended to all other river systems so that clubs and riparian landowners (especially those who currently make nothing whatsoever from their fishing rights) could benefit from occasional visitors who do not want to purchase a whole club book just for a day or two on a beat per year, or have to go to some shop that is closed when you can get out to it (early mornings, Sundays, after work) to get a day ticket?

This has to be the way to get people back on the rivers fishing in numbers, surely?

Make it easy for them...!

rufus said:

This has to be the way to get people back on the rivers fishing in numbers, surely?

Click to expand...

That scheme is certainly food for thought, and anything to get anglers back onto the rivers has to be a good thing.

On the Bisterne stretch of the Avon they have a similar 'honesty box' for when the bailiff isn't there, and it seems to work very well.

That is a bloody good idea.

Especially for the long lonely completely deserted stretches of canal and other underfished water kept on the ticket by otherwise uninterested local clubs, thereby effectively sterilised. Especially for the kids and youngsters who would have been cheerfully fishing those waters 35 - 40 years ago but now can't go near them without disproportionately expensive club memberships and books.

Given a book of tickets and a letterbox / honesty box system I'd just love to be able to put a quids worth in the box for a bit of moving water fishing on such unused canals and neglected rivers any day. Plus which its a kid friendly and affordable idea at that level.

Not so sure its workable at more pressurised, prestige waters tho: the control of overall numbers isn't there.

Tho the use of fish tickets and honesty box at the Albury estate trout fisheries up the road is a bloody good system and not dissimilar*.


(* you need to buy fish tickets in advance of fishing and a days fishing permit. The £12 day ticket entitles you to be on the water for that day. The fish tickets (£18 for 2, £30 for 4) entitle you to fish. One ticket = one fish. Each trout you catch costs you a ticket which you post in the honesty box at the end of the day. If you run out of tickets you have to stop fishing until you buy some more. Get caught fishing without unused fish tickets in hand and get the book thrown at you.
But the real beauty of it is that if you blank your fish tickets remain valid for another day(s) until the end of the season. So you can come back another day, pay just £12 for a day ticket and fish out those tickets. Bloody good system. Only drawback from my point of view is that no catch and release is allowed but that's commercially understandable.)