Do You Care About Bass? Want To Get Your Voice Heard? Join Our Fight Today

If you fish for bass in the UK and want to continue fishing for them in the future, then this may be the most important thing you will ever read…

When was the last time you went fishing for bass? Did you catch that big one you’ve been after? Was it bigger than 50cm? How many times did you go fishing in the last few months only to have made your way home having caught a handful of smaller fish or, worse still, blanked and caught nothing at all?!

Over the last 40 years the bass stock has been exploited and commercially over-fished. The stocks remain perilously low despite 6 years of reduced commercial and recreational pressure. Moreover, ICES recommends a 14.7% increase in landings for 2023⁺.

The UK government is re-evaluating how it manages our inshore fisheries by creating individual management plans for all commercially exploitable fish. And they are starting with bass. We want to ensure that recreational anglers and the bass get a fair deal in the Bass Fishery Management Plan (Bass FMP).

Please join the fight for ‘our’ bass and support the future of the bass stock. The future of your own bass fishing is at stake…

What can you do?

Despite the grim picture and the current state of the bass stock, there is something you can do to help, but you need to ACT NOW!! 

DEFRA has commissioned a research group called Policy Lab to work on the bass fishery management plan.

Please show your concern simply by registering with Policy Lab here: Bass FMP Contact Form.

AND then register here for a mid-August online debate:  Bass FMP Collective Intelligence debate. The debate will be limited to 500 participants. Come on, we can fill those places!

 Here’s what BASS/SOSB/Angling Trust believe we should be asking for:

• A healthy functioning population of bass with plenty of protection
• Effective and clear legislation, which is rigorously enforced
• Fair and proportional access to the bass stock. In other words, as stakeholders, recreational anglers should have a decent chance of catching bass. (In 2018 UK commercial bass landings were less than £5 million compared to the c£200 million RSA expenditure on bass*.)
• Protection of key habitats that support bass stocks
• More data to be collected to fill knowledge gaps

*The European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products –Commercial and Recreational Fisheries for Wild Seabass in the Atlantic–Economic and Market Study. November 2021.

⁺ICES Advice on fishing opportunities, catch, and effort Celtic Seas and Greater North Sea ecoregions Published 30 June 2022

A joint statement by BASS, Save Our Sea Bass & Angling Trust