Numbers of anglers and the kind of fishing they do have undoubtedly changed over the years. There are few robust statistics to demonstrate this but anyone who has been fishing for some time will have noticed changes on the bank. Fashions come and go but many marine fish species have just gone and not returned. The decline in cod and plaice and more recently mackerel is a matter of scientific record and of course the experience of every sea angler, everyone, that is, capable of recognising the obvious (which does not apply to all). Read the old books and you will see photographs of the deep-water beaches lined with anglers during the cod runs in autumn. John Holden speaks of struggling to find a space on the shingle back in the 1960s. He also wrote that without cod, sea fishing would collapse. Well the cod have all but gone from the beaches yet anglers, demonstrating Sam Johnson’s triumph of hope, still appear on the shore, though in much reduced numbers. When I still tried to catch plaice in spring I only had two or three other anglers for company. Now hardly anyone bothers.
How many sea fishermen are there left? There are no reliable figures. CEFAS uses ‘citizen science’ to provide an estimate of between 568,000 to 753,000. A pretty big range of uncertainty, though not as large as that for the annual number of days spent fishing — 1 to 6.8 million. We can be sure there were far more sea anglers 60 years ago.
Coarse fishing has not suffered the same depredations as the sea but even in this branch of fishing the waterside is much quieter (except for carp lakes). Tom Fort’s book, Casting Shadows, tells of the popularity of angling in the industrial heartlands of England. Riverbanks would be lined on Sundays with club anglers fishing in their weekly matches. Even in my time I recall fair numbers on the riverbank at weekends although the decline had set in long before, apparently from the 1980s on. Now many once popular fisheries are almost deserted, partly because fewer people go fishing but also because many have transferred to commercial ponds overstocked with carp. This is not to do with deteriorating fishing – many coarse fishing rivers still have plenty of fish; indeed the rivers of the old industrial towns are much cleaner.
The evidence is visible in the way people fish now. No more will you see anglers long trotting with maggots; instead a walk along the riverbank will pass pairs of black rods pointing skyward, a bit like scaled down beachcasters. This is the kit of the barbel or carp angler. Everyone has become a specimen hunter, one reason being there are far more specimen fish in rivers (and lakes) now, a consequence of the quantity of nutritious pellets and boilies, which sell in large quantities, regularly piled into the water, and the industry of fish farms. Current records are far higher than those you’ll find in the old fishing books. Big fish are the thing, a change possibly linked to the urge to brag about catches on social media accompanied by the favoured ‘grip and stare’ pics. Roach and dace are now dismissively referred to as ‘silvers’.
How many freshwater fishermen are there now in the UK? Continuous figures for rod licence sales only go back to the year 2000. In 1992 rod licence sales, the first year of the national licence, were about 911,000. By 2000, combined sales of coarse and migratory fish licences stood at just over 1 million. This figure actually rose up until 2011, after which it went into decline. The latest figure for 2024/25 is 934,000. There are no figures for the old water authority licence sales, despite some rubbish you might see thrown up by the AI components of search engines.
It is surprising to note that freshwater angler numbers, as inferred from rod licence sales, have not changed that much from 30 years ago but I think it’s fair to conclude that angling is nothing like as popular as 50 years back. Another grim change that’s happened for the coarse fisherman is the intrusion of money. Landowners have cottoned on to the potential for sweating their fishing assets. Rather than accepting the peppercorns from angling clubs, the rise of big-carp fishing, as practised by bivvy-dwelling troglodytes, has allowed fisheries to pump up the rents. One deplorable example is the case of Windsor Great Park, run by the Crown Estates, turning their lakes into a carp syndicate, annual membership costing over £700. This was once a fishery open to all for a modest price. There are other examples. I know of two angling clubs turfed off the fisheries they’d rented for decades to make way for dubious businesses charging rents you’d expect for good trout water.
The only branch of fishing to maintain some sort of stability is fly fishing, especially on the chalk streams which are mostly in the south of England (with two or three equally exclusive rivers in Yorkshire). Access still depends on having plenty of money. The average age is higher. Away from the chalklands there is plenty of inexpensive fly fishing, some of it even very good despite the declines of the rivers and the fly life in them. Hatches of fly have collapsed in all the rivers I’ve fished and I’m fairly sure that most of the current reports of abundant flotillas of fly are in the imaginations of those who write these less credible articles. On the plus side, the trend is towards wild trout fishing and away from stocking. While coarse fishing relies more on stocking, much of it pointless, trout fishing is looking to a more natural approach. But the poor fly life has caused a move from dry fly towards nymph fishing, especially Euronymphing, at least where it’s allowed. On the chalk streams, as I know well, you are now fussing over tiny black gnats and other terrestrial imitations more than iron blues and olive dries.
The greatest change is environmental. The seas are overfished and every river in the country is polluted to some degree. The principal polluters, agriculture and the water companies, have got away with it for a long time and are still getting away with it. At least we know what to do. Doing it seems to be the sticking point. That’s the one change we’d all like to see.
The Secret Angler 