Open letter to all Broads Anglers.

Following a  period of reflection for our members during February, we have concluded the discussions and six of our members have decided to step down from BASG membership.

Andy Hindes has struggled with his own business commitments and has agreed to step down as a Director. Both Andy and Steve Lane will take on new positions as technical advisers to the BASG Board.

So Andy Feetham, Nick Simpson, Richard Ayers and Richard Miles leave us.  Thanks gents for your support over the years and I wish you all good health and tight lines for the future.

So where do we go from here, you may ask.

Duncan, Simon and I have been focussed on Salinity recently and attending many Broads stakeholder meetings in an attempt to seek some form of ownership on this critical issue.

Simon is in the process of delivering our own salinity monitoring solution, end to end. This proof of concept will hopefully lead to a productionised solution in the coming months, if we can secure funding support.

Wensum Catchment Partnership

I have taken on the role of Partnership Chair on the Wensum, which will have it’s own newsletter issued shortly, which includes many new volunteer engagements on both water quality and invertebrate sampling.

Broads PhD

The subject of understanding Broads Fish stocks and their movements, is again back on the agenda. This time with a further PhD from Bournemouth university, sponsored by the Environment Agency rather then Natural England. We welcome this further study into fish populations in the Broads and are seeking to conclude the previous research work on Pike from the 2018, to a satisfactory conclusion.  Further meetings are planned on this in the coming weeks.

We have a further meeting with the area Director from the Environment Agency to explore further how we can formally reach a partnership to deliver a future fisheries service within the Broads.

Whilst these high level stakeholder meetings take place, we want to get together with all our remaining members and explore how we create a new angling strategy for the Broads.

This isn’t the Kelvin and Duncan show, as we propose to come with a blank sheet with only headlines and aims as we agreed back in January. So this will be developed by our members.

If you would like to get involved in this, please drop me a line.

Regards

Kelvin Allen

BASG Chair and Director

2nd March 2023