Well what a year again, with many of us again getting away from all of the worldly issues by taking time out by the water doing our favoured pastime. People outside our world of angling ask me, what is it that fishing brings to you? My favoured expression is that angling means so many things to so many different people, which many outside angling won’t understand.
But whether it’s the competitive edge of beating a fellow angler, or the competitive edge of putting yourself against nature, or just being there and letting the mind relax into an environment away from today’s life pressures, everybody has a different view and opinion.
The Broads see’s this with some of the largest competitive angling festivals held outside commercial fishery venues, attracting anglers from all over the UK to come and fish the Broads. That said it also attracts tens of thousands of visiting tourists who like their parents and grandparents have done, try their hand at fishing for the first time. Leading to some getting the angling habitat for life from their Broads experience.
It’s this that makes the Broads Fishery so important to sustain and maintain, something for the past 2 years we have seemingly battled with the statutory authorities to understand.
In recent weeks we have finally reached a consensus in that fish do matter and do have some level of protection, if we can prove harm is being brought by the likes of closing access their prime spawning grounds on Hoveton Great Broad.
This is quite some achievement, given the documented position taken by some over the past few years in respect to Bream and cyprid fish in general. None of this would have been achieved without the support from the Angling Trust and Fish Legal, let alone us at BASG fighting the corner with professional vigour from the onset.
So what does this mean moving forward you may ask. Well we still need to secure a way forward in sustaining the Broads Fishery, as it battles not only through lack of investment, natures continued threat from climatic change and salinity incursions. Let alone the EA wanting to dispose of its bankside assets and liabilities. So things will have to change!
As we stated at our relaunch event back in October, we will be focussed on this in 2022 and with Director Duncan Holmes deciding to commit to this full time from January, much will evolve in the coming months in how we can achieve this.
On the River Wensum, the strength in forming the Wensum Partnership has been demonstrated in it’s storyboard of achievements and objectives. But there is always more to do and 2022 will be a real force majeure in defining pollution and it’s ownership.
So, as I look back at my regular monthly blogs, things have really challenged us this year on a range of issues https://basg.online/chairmans-page/
But whatever Christmas brings you, be merry and enjoy what you have as we head into 2022 with more questions than answers on a number of fronts.
Merry Christmas
Kelvin
Chair Broads Angling Services Group
