Working with nature and engaging in habitat restoration are crucial for protecting and enhancing fish populations and improving fishing opportunities. Making sure there is a mosaic of habitats in your lake or river helps to provide essential spawning grounds, shelter and food sources for fish. In turn, this leads to increased fish populations and general wildlife.
It also makes our fishing locations enjoyable spaces to enjoy. Almost 90% of anglers recorded in the National Angling Survey stated that the experience of nature and scenery, and the chance to escape crowds and noise was important to them.
Bank Erosion
Bank erosion is a natural and important process which plays a significant role in shaping landscapes and ecosystems. However, when it occurs excessively it can have negative consequences. It can lead to bank instability, and damage riparian infrastructure. Sediment washed into the river can suffocate spawning gravels.
Several approaches can be used to improve habitat and mitigate bank erosion, including the use of riparian buffer zones, bank protection using brash and tree planting. Our partners at the Wild Trout Trust offer advice and a series of short guides on some of the problems and solutions.
Tree planting and vegetation management
Trees provide resilience to extreme weather and pollution, provide shelter for aquatic animals and increase bank stability. As such, they are a valuable inclusion into landscape management and offer substantial benefits to rivers and stillwaters.
Organisations such as the Woodland Trust can provide advice and funding to clubs and fisheries looking to plant and restore trees on their waters. Management of woodland can also provide benefits to wildlife.
There are many more strategic options available for clubs seeking to improve or secure a landscape or habitat. The benefits of floating island, woody debris and other habitat installations on a still water is covered in our fisheries management section. Click below to view a presentation from Paul Coulson from the Institute of Fisheries Management on Creating Habitat on a Stillwater Fishery.
How to…
Build a bat or bird box
As well as undertaking habitat work within the water and on the bank, small additions such as the installation of a bat or bird box can provide important spaces for other types of wildlife. See the links below.
How to make a bird box
How to make a bat box See also: Considerations for the installation site.
Anglers Against Litter
There is no doubt that anglers value clean waterways and landscapes. Maintaining a clean fishery or club helps to enhance the overall fishing experience and reflects the commitment of the fishing community to responsible stewardship. Often this litter can be blown in from elsewhere, or dropped by others, but through the Anglers Against Litter campaign, clubs can receive support for free litter picking kits. There are also opportunities for volunteers to receive the award of an exclusive cap if they go ‘above and beyond’ to help maintain a fishery, waterway or the adjacent landscape.
Love Fishing Love Nature
Through our Love Fishing Love Nature campaign, we aim to capture some of the best practices that are being undertaken by clubs, fisheries and individual anglers around the country to restore habitats and enjoy the surroundings that angling can offer. It also aims to specifically showcase the unique experiences that anglers have with nature whilst out fishing. It’s an initiative that we hope helps to capture the approaches adopted by angling groups that others can feed from and hence, support the creation of thriving fisheries and stepping stones for nature within the landscape.
It’s an approach that is perfectly encapsulated in a Love Fishing Love Nature video featuring fishing legend Chris Yates and Bafta award winning film maker Hugh Miles, creator of Passion for Angling and Catching the Impossible. In the film, the pair talk intimately about the past and the future.and explain why fishing – and nature – has been so important to them. Watching it on our Love Fishing Love Nature page, might just provide some inspiration……..
