The plan was to lure fish for whatever came along

Most of my fishing in the last month has been less serious stuff, enjoying the summer months with friends and using methods which are more fun than some of the sit-and-wait we generally use when chasing specimens. The tench lake I spent the Spring fishing is now so heavily weeded that I feel the fish should be left in peace. The rivers are still a bit low and warm for the chub and barbel fishing to start in earnest. Rather than sit at home, I recently arranged to spend a day out with my pike fishing fanatic mate Wayne and my father, boat fishing on the Thames. The plan was to lure fish for whatever came along. Certainly in this area of the river lure fishing is rare, so although we didn’t expect anything huge, I was sure that we would catch a few. In fact, the fishing was pretty good. In a few hours we caught eleven pike from several different areas, along with chub and perch. All this on pretty big lures and heavy tackle. None of the fish were big, but so what? Lure fishing really is absorbing fishing as you cannot let your mind wander for a second. Unlike so many of my other childhood haunts, the Thames is much as I remember it, absolutely teaming with fish. Everywhere we looked were shoals of small dace, chub and bleak. Perch and roach could be found in the slower reaches. Chub to an estimated five pounds passed the boat, as did a huge shoal of bream and even a couple of river carp which we managed to spook. Add to this the Kingfishers, Green Woodpeckers and even a Red kite which circled over the boat, and you can see that the Thames valley, even though surrounded by urban sprawl really is a wonderful place to spend a summer morning. Now, given that this was the end of July, I would have expected there to have been a few dozen anglers along the river. Most would have been out spending a few hours away from their families and everyday lives, relaxing by the river. Some would have family in tow and be enjoying a day out. None would have been really seriously fishing. This year though, we did not see a soul. The anglers had disappeared from the banks. Even worse, the usual haunts, easily spotted by the flattened grass, were completely overgrown. No one had fished the reach all summer long.

It is my impression, both from being out on the banks and from talking to people in the trade that this isn’t an isolated case. Where is everyone? The fish are certainly still there and can be caught, only the anglers seem to have disappeared. I personally feel that just as many people are going fishing these days, but that the hard core of regular anglers is diminishing. More people now wait for conditions to be just right then nip off to their local commercial fishery for a few hours, catch a stack of fish and then put the rods away for a month or more. Now there is nothing wrong with that at all, but I am just a little disheartened at the lack of interest in some of our most impressive fisheries. I wonder if anglers will ever be able to return to fishing these more taxing venues ever again? A few hours catching fish may be all that most anglers want, but the methods required to make the jump to fishing other venues may now be beyond many, and with such high expectations who will bother? No, give me the river bank any day but I fear that without the ranks of anglers there to protect them our rivers may once again fall into rapid decline.