Frequently Asked Questions

• Rod licence reform: The Angling Trust successfully lobbied the Environment Agency to review the rod licence structure. We felt it unfair that carp and specimen anglers should have to purchase two rod licences to fish with just three rods (effectively paying for four), that junior anglers had to pay for a licence, and that rod licences expired at the end of March regardless of when they were purchased. Due to our pressure, anglers now have the option to purchase a three-rod licence, junior anglers get a free rod licence and all licences run for 365 days from the date of purchase.
• Preventing dredging: Following the 2014 floods there were attempts by politicians and the farming lobby to deregulate dredging and return to failed policies of the past, which damaged river systems, reduced biodiversity and destroyed important fish habitat. The Angling Trust co-authored the ‘Flood and Dredging –A Reality Check’ report with other NGOs, lobbied the Defra Minister and highlighted the issues in the media to ensure this didn’t happen. As a result, we have managed to fight off widespread dredging programmes.
• Hydropower regulations: Hydropower schemes, if badly designed, can destroy important fish habitat and river functions, kill or injure fish of all species and increase vulnerability to predation. We produced a dossier to highlight the impact of hydropower and its insignificant benefits, along with a guide to advise community groups about design. We’ve objected to hundreds of applications and secured changes in design and rejections. Most significantly, we eventually persuaded the EA to tighten up guidelines to developers to stop the more damaging schemes from coming forward. Fish Legal won a landmark injunction to stop a new hydro on the River Trent at Sawley. The company involved cancelled 15 planned schemes and went out of business.
• Conserving crucians: In 2014, the Angling Trust teamed up with the Environment Agency to start a campaign to try and halt the decline of true crucian carp. Habitat loss and hybridisation with king carp and brown goldfish has made this species increasingly scarce in recent years, and therefore the National Crucian Conservation Project was formed with the objectives to:

– Promote the conservation of the species and its habitat

– Encourage the development of well-managed crucian fisheries

To date, many angling clubs have approached the Environment Agency and the Angling Trust to set up bespoke crucian waters because of the NCCP. Furthermore, each year we run the Catch a Crucian Month competition to promote crucian angling to adults and junior anglers alike.

• Sea Angling Access: We have successfully run a number of local campaigns to influence local government over access for angling. These include, but are not limited to: helping to prevent a ban on angling and bait digging by Rother District Council in East Sussex; lobbying Adur District Council for a new slipway on the river; supporting our Wyvern Region’s campaign for East Devon District Council to maintain slipway access to the River Exe and securing the legal interpretation of the law for members of the public collecting bait for fishing to do so for ‘friends and family’.
• Legal challenges of government: the Angling Trust & Fish Legal teamed up with WWF to fight two judicial reviews of the Environment Agency’s implementation of the Water Framework Directive and achieve the standard of good ecological status in rivers, lakes and coastal waters. We succeeded in getting the government to create a Catchment Restoration Fund worth nearly £100 million. We continue to challenge the government to do more, and faster.
• Tackling poaching and fish theft: The Angling Trust has been instrumental in raising awareness of fisheries crime, including rod licence compliance, and increasing the support available to the Environment Agency. The Fisheries Enforcement Support Service, staffed by highly experienced former police officers, helps coordinate a multi-agency response through Operations TRAVERSE and LEVIATHAN, working closely with such partners as the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit and Magistrates’ Association. Anglers have been empowered to help, and their knowledge increased, via the immensely popular Voluntary Bailiff Service, now nearly 500 strong, and Fisheries Enforcement Workshops. This work has firmly located fisheries crime on the map in an unprecedented way and is funded by freshwater rod licence income. The FESS also includes the ‘Building Bridges’ Project, aimed at educating and integrating migrant anglers from countries whose angling law and culture is contrary to our own. Through the provision of multi-lingual information and engaging with migrant communities, bridges are built between migrant and British anglers –generating numerous positive benefits, not least increased club memberships and legal compliance. Education and integration are key –and the watchwords of ‘Building Bridges’.
• Water Quality: Fish Legal successfully fought a landmark legal case to the High Court over 6 years to get all the water companies and other privatised utility companies to be subject to the Environmental Information Regulations so that they are compelled to tell us what they discharge into rivers and the sea, and how much water they abstract. We continue to challenge the Environment Agency and government to improve monitoring and regulate polluters more firmly.
• Salmon: We successfully campaigned to get drift nets taking salmon returning to lots of different rivers banned from 2018 and nearly all other netting banned from 2019. This will save more than 20,000 fish from the nets each year. We successfully resisted attempts to impose mandatory catch and release on all anglers in England, but unfortunately could not persuade Natural Resources Wales to take a voluntary approach.
• Sea Bass: the Angling Trust successfully campaigned for a bigger minimum landing size to allow bass to spawn before they were legally allowed to be caught and then succeeded in getting the targeted netting of bass banned in 2017. We continue to campaign for the rights of members of the public to fish for bass and to take a reasonable catch home for their own consumption and for better enforcement of netting regulations.
• Abstraction reform: the Angling Trust has long campaigned for total reform of the water abstraction licensing system in England to give more protection to our rivers from over-abstraction. To this end, we helped get a resilience duty imposed on the water industry regulator, Ofwat, and a promise from the Government of abstraction reform in the next Water Bill. In addition, a raft of damaging and previously unregulated abstractions are now being licensed, including trickle irrigation –which occurs on a massive scale.
• Sea Angling in Marine Conservation Zones: Over three years, we negotiated for recreational anglers to be the only sector allowed to fish for and retain black bream during the spawning season on three out of the four management zones within the Kingmere Marine Conservation Zone. Trawling and netting are prohibited during this period.
• Habitat destruction: in the winter of 2016/17, the Angling Trust received numerous reports from its members of trees and other bankside vegetation being removed by the Environment Agency and its contractors, destroying vital habitat for fish and the insects on which fish depend for food. It produced a dossier of the destruction and challenged the Environment Agency to amend its policy, which it has now done. It has also provided an online tool so that angling clubs, fishery owners and anglers can see what work is planned for their stretch of river.