Soapbox
Your rivers, lakes and oceans need you, says angling activist Jim Murray
FISHING SELLS TACKLE, CLOTHES and magazines. It promotes better mental health and an appealing lifestyle. Our sport “sells” into a plethora of markets, but what it doesn’t yet sell to any great effect is environmentalism. The surfers have managed it excellently, highlighting the plight of our coastlines through the Surfers Against Sewage campaign, so isn’t it time anglers did the same for our rivers?
We know we are the custodians of our waters, the advocates, the protectors. We see firsthand what is happening, and we are often the “first responders”. But we need to let non-anglers know, too, because we are a huge voice and deserve to be heard by Government and those in power to effect real change.
How do we do that? Well, I think we need to support and communicate with each other more. Our activism and our passion need to be more focused and informed, otherwise we are just a bunch of angry fishermen yelling into the abyss. NGOs need to readily collaborate and feed their science to us, so that our argument is taken seriously.
We also need to encourage more people to fish, to inspire the next generation to pick up a rod and get to know their rivers because this will lead to greater awareness of the state of our waterways.
We need to destigmatise our sport, making clear that it is not an elitist hobby reserved for men in red cords (apologies in advance). We need to incentivise the younger generations to fish by allowing easier access to our waters, giving them more opportunities by creating more stillwaters where they can learn to cast a line. We need to make fishing more affordable and more inclusive.
But, of course, all this happens only if our waters are clean and healthy enough for fish to thrive. That’s the deal. Only by giving anglers a bigger part to play in the improvement of our rivers, and encouraging more people to fish, will we undoubtedly help the fish to survive.
Besides Field Marshal Sharkey, other recent examples of activist anglers are Mike Deacon, an avid sea-trout angler on the Sussex Ouse. After documenting the decline over decades of the health of his beloved river, mostly at the hands of Southern Water (SW), Mike has been bo
