The Secret Angler

I’ve bought a copy of the latest issue of The Field. At this time of year there is a bit more fishing displacing the usual dominant hunting and shooting (and young women with no clothes, discretely photographed of course). What most attracted my attention are the two polemical articles by John Bailey, one in which he attacks fisheries scientists’ reluctance to stock and, in the second piece, lack of cormorant control.

It’s not for me to defend scientists, yet this is the age of raging and false information. John Bailey claims that, as a graduate, he was once on the side of science but now supports stocking against the advice of scientists. His reason is based on his travels ‘to all corners of the country’ during which he finds dying rivers everywhere. Bailey is a History graduate, not a scientist, hence perhaps his comment that scientists are getting richer. Most fish biologists are employed by public bodies, where pay increases have been restricted to 1% a year since 2008 — they are getting poorer. He avers that ‘authorities are betraying our rivers’, another bit of bluster uncomfortably reminiscent of the nonsense heard in the Brexit babble.

It’s true that salmon runs have fallen yet more in recent years. Coarse populations in rivers I fish are healthy but perhaps I have not travelled to farther enough corners. I often see frequent restockings of coarse fish to no great purpose: anglers still complain that the fishing was so much better in the past.

The question of salmon stocks is more interesting because they have undoubtedly declined. Scientists point out that stocking is futile except in special circumstances; rivers can only support so many fish and additions are just money down the river. Bailey quotes river keepers in support of his view that lack of fish is due to lack of stocking. In last year’s Gamefisher (annual magazine of Salmon & Trout Conservation, the old S&TA), Andrew Douglas-Home, a Tweed fishery owner, points out that natural stocks of salmon fry are very healthy. Adding hatchery fish would only increase mortality. He goes on to observe that salmon runs have always been cyclical. Whether this is enough to explain low numbers in all rivers is not always clear. A fisheries scientist I know well tells me that the main problem is at sea; for some reason the salmon are just not returning, and no one knows why. Global warming has been implicated, but there are plenty of anglers who don’t believe in that either.

The poor success rate of stock enhancement from hatcheries has been established for some time and Bailey offers no convincing argument to the contrary. He is vociferous too in his condemnation of cormorant management, dramatically claiming that small trout and salmon are ‘hoovered to extinction.’ Now I am not sure myself about the impact of cormorant predation, other than to note, as above, that the rivers I fish have healthy stocks, despite the appearance of cormorants on some of them. I might be convinced if Bailey were to offer some evidence. Like me, I suspect he has not read any research on the subject, which is not surprising as academic journals, apart from being hard work, are not readily available to the public.

His answer, the ‘Slovenian solution,’ is to require club members to put in 40 hours of anti-cormorant duty each season, armed with guns and whistles. In this country such an approach is neither practicable nor legal. I think there is not much doubt that cormorants can reduce fish populations in some circumstances, but Bailey overstates the case. My understanding is that cormorants do not invariably deplete stocks; it depends on the water concerned. Anglers are too ready to believe in simple reasons and answers to the perceived problems in fisheries, problems that may not even exist. John Bailey should be more circumspect.

How many anglers are there in Britain? According to rod licence sales, about 1.2 million freshwater anglers in the year 2015/16, a decline of about 200,000 compared to 6 years earlier. In 2012 the estimate of those who go sea fishing was about 0.9 million, although this figure is not so reliable as that based on licence sales. So around 2 million altogether, allowing a little for those who fish both in sea and freshwater.

This represents a steep fall of angler numbers in recent decades. In the 1980s and the years before, estimates were in the region of 3 million freshwater anglers, and presumably sea fishermen were more numerous too. It would be surprising if numbers of sea anglers had held up given the plunge in marine fish stocks. Reasons for the drop in freshwater anglers are harder to find though the truth of the figures is apparent on the bank: you can have a water to yourself quite often, especially if it’s a river.

How many fishermen read fishing books and magazines? Two million anglers should mean fairly healthy sales for at least a few periodicals. Well, that supposes that all anglers are enthusiasts rather than dabblers or holiday fishermen. Whatever the actual figure is, the fact is sales of books and fishing magazines are low in proportion to potential customers. Angling Times has the largest circulation but only sold just under 26,000 copies in 2016, the most recent figures I can find. So only 1.3% of all the anglers bought the paper. Of the magazines, Improve Your Coarse Fishing sells best with a total of about 22,000 copies. Trout and Salmon is the best-selling game fishing monthly at 21,000, with Sea Angler not far behind. Sales of all these publications are in decline. In America, where of course there are more anglers, many of them fly and lure anglers, magazines do better. Circulation can exceed a million copies. Even if content does often encompass hunting too (big in America) these are figures of dreams to UK editors. The big-sellers are also instructional. The two main literary mags are Gray’s Sporting Journal and The Drake, not so widely read as the how-tos, but still doing better than British equivalents.

UK sales of fishing books are also very low. A typical amount for the majority of titles is a few hundred a year, and that probably only for the first year of publication. Some may make it into the thousands, especially a book written by a familiar name, or better still one that’s been on TV, but many will barely meet the cost of publication or make a loss.

The conclusion, then, is that a few anglers read but the majority does not. Why? Are anglers not ones for books? Is it the lack of interest in printed matter when there is so much to read on the web? Or is the quality of fishing magazines and books below par? Could be all three. Many are certainly conservative. Instructional material with plenty of pictures is always popular, hence the success of titles like Improve Your Coarse Fishing. How-to-do-it books tend to be the best sellers too, though still not enough for an author to give up the day job.

For the literary kind of title only a handful of book authors are in modern anglers’ focus, most of them long dead. In the magazine world there is only one literary offering, the quarterly Fallon’s Angler, which I’ve already written about. America is obviously better catered for, and there is certainly a higher standard of writing over there.

What do these numbers imply for British writers on fishing? In this country there is little to encourage them. I published my last magazine article over ten years ago. About then I lost interest because the pay was rubbish, declining in real terms for several years, and editors sat on pieces for ages after they were accepted. The market is just not there for writing beyond a bit of recycled instruction and the cheesy journalism from the likes of Angling Times. Apart from the small readership of Fallon’s, which may be assumed rather fewer than 20,000, and for the handful of worthwhile books, the answer to the question posed in this post is clear.

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