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.
The Secret Angler 