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Are we coarse anglers living in the past over prices?


Dave H

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Angling isn't an inherently expensive sport, even a highly managed fishery is relatively low maintenance compared to sports needing more artificial facilities. What pushes up prices is demand, whether for limited angling places or from other land uses.

Tell that to Steve Burke as he pays to have weed manually removed from his lakes.

" My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

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Guest bbamboo

Please before any comments (negative) regarding day ticket and club prices .. I would urge anyone to get actively involved in the running of your club.

Edited by bbamboo
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Tell that to Steve Burke as he pays to have weed manually removed from his lakes.

It's all relative, though. The equipment and manpower for that is going to be expensive (even though the bailiffs aren't paid, their time still has a value to Steve) but then look at how much time and machinery a golf course needs for vegetation control. Consider the number of paid employees at a gymnasium, the capital and ongoing maintenance costs of all the exercise equipment, the energy costs, the swimming pool maintenance, business rates and ground rents for decent locations with proper car parking, etc.

 

Wingham is expensive mostly because of the relatively low member numbers needed to keep fishing pressure low. If you want to join a syndicate in South East England where you are likely to have 40 acres of prime water to yourself, it isn't going to be cheap, especially if your rent reflects the desire of others to use the site for other things.

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Guest bluedun

No, fishing isn't really an expensive sport: there are waters galore in this country, and numbers of anglers are shrinking. What could make it expensive, like football season tickets, is if certain people gained great economic power to control access (as in football), but that is unlikely to happen with rivers and lakes everywhere, though it has certainly happened with some waters, one I used to fish years ago. Even river trout fishing in the south can be had at a reasonable price, outside the Test and Itchen. If you want to fish waters stocked with overweight carp, then you will have to pay for that of course, but I prefer my fishing as wild as one can get.

 

Where anglers are really paying is through environmental degradation. But the above criticisms of the EA are unfair. If a club wants them to help out with the condition of a club water they will. They can't possibly keep an eye on every water in the country but I have found my local area EA very effective - and their staff are not paid particularly well either. Do many people here know about the Water Framework Directive? That is a European law that obliges the UK to improve the quality of its rivers to a defined status by 2025. The EA has put a lot of work into this.

 

So pay your licence fee with a smile, support the enlightened environmental policies of the EU (you won't get many from this country), and join clubs and do your bit to make the fishing in this country as good as it was 60 years ago.

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Guest bluedun

You're talking about a few rivers that ran through big centres of industry - lower Mersey, Tyne, Thames. They're cleaner now undoubtedly; but elsewhere rivers have deteriorated.

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Yes, my view may be coloured by the post-industrial recovery of some of our major rivers. Certainly the rivers I had access to as a youngster only 30 years ago have improved from a state of virtual fishlessness to producing good fishing. What we would have given to have had rivers even as good as those which have now declined!

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bluedun

 

World wide the number pollutant is/was the indiscriminate use and disposal of animal waste and of agricultural chemicals and fertilizers. Just because you can't see the pollutant doesn't mean it isn't present. Look at the Ribble. Diffused pollution from rural areas that comes from widespread activities (mostly ag) and may enter water across an area not necessarily from a single point. For example nutrients entering a stream from a neighboring field. Most often this type pollution causes a change to the eco system, resulting in an indirect loss of wildlife that is far more difficult to detect. Single point industrial pollutants are more easily identified and controlled.

 

Phone

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Guest bluedun

phone

 

Yes, that's what I mean. Phosphates are a big problem now, most noticeable in the trout streams - algae on the river bed, excessive weed growth (of the wrong kind). And there is abstraction - low water levels, siltation - which effects fly life. With luck the WFD will start to deal with these pollutants, assuming our govt doesn't take us out of Europe, in which case I expect the whole thing to collapse.

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I think that fishing as a hobby is one of the cheapest around, The issue of expense comes with tackle and baits an indeed some clubs charges for a yearly ticket.

 

Would a £1000 pole catch you more fish than a £100? Yes the £1000 is much longer and lighter but that would be about it.

Some of the baits are there to catch the angler as well as the fish, Don't get me wrong i have been drawn in over the years on bait and tackle but in hindsight the cheapest is sometimes the best.

Like most things you don't need to spend a fortune its personal prefernce i suppose.

If its too big i won't land it!

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