Fishing revisited John Ellis, National Fisheries and Angling Manager, discusses fishing and the opportunities it provides pupils with today There is evidence of our hunter gatherer ancestors fishing as far back as 40,000 years ago. Putting food on the table was the major objective back then. In the Bible, at least four of the disciples of Jesus were fishermen and the Son of God urged followers to become ‘fishers of men’. Is there any other sport with a longer history? Fishing and literature Since Dame Juliana Berners’ first book on fishing, dating to around 1420, much has been written about the sport of angling. It is said that Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler has seen more published editions than any other book except for the Bible. It was more than 350 years ago that old Izaak described fishing as the ‘contemplative man’s sport’. Samuel Johnson was an admirer
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of fly-fishing, but of other sorts of fishing could mutter only ‘it is a worm at one end and a fool at the other’. In more modern times, Bernard Venables published the iconic Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing, which sold over two million copies and inspired a post-war generation of mostly boys to get the fishing habit. But what is anglings’ role today and where might it be heading? The changing nature of childhood There appears to be a steadily growing acceptance that in parts of our society, too many young people are addicted to social media and excessive employment of electronic devices, some suffering the consequences of nature deficiency syndrome. There are relatively few dissenting voices to the concept of the need for children to once again reconnect with the natural world. Alas, the days when groups of mischievous ten year olds would excitedly head off along the towpath with parents confident of their safe return are largely a distant memory. Village ponds, lakes, canals, rivers and streams were all exploration grounds for developing a lifelong interest in the natural world. Growing up in the 1960s, there was hardly a boy in my cohort (fishing was male dominated back then) who didn’t possess their own rudimentary fishing equipment, often procured by saving up hardearned pocket money in anticipation of a future trip to Woolworths. The more adventurous of us learnt to breed our own maggots, forever fearful that mum might get wind of our illicit activities, with dad knowing the score and staying shtum.
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The Let’s Fish programme At Canal & River Trust, the UK’s largest waterways charity, we firmly believe that some of the modern stresses and strains of life can be mitigated by getting out on the towpath, for life is better by water. For the past two years we’ve hosted a nationwide programme of fishing activity under our Let’s Fish banner with almost 8500 attendees, aged from 4 to 84, taking part during 2019. Some attendees are lapsed anglers looking to get back into the sport for age is no barrier to participation in fishing. A 90-year-old angler, Yorkshire’s Donald Peirson, entered the record books this year as the oldest national championship team member ever. Most Let’s Fish attendees are young people of junior school age. Rather like rugby, football and cricket, fishing was traditionally seen as a male preserve but, as elsewhere, things are rapidly changing. During 2019 Let’s Fish 34% of participants were female and mums who are increasingly engaging in the sport alongside their offspring. Why choose canals? Canals developed a reputation in the industrial revolution as dirty grimy industrial places. Without them, the history of these islands would have been substantially different. They were the motorways of the industrial revolution, but all that was a long time ago when Britannia ruled the waves. Some feel into disrepair, abandoned forever, while a few are even being restored. Happily, the majority did survive the rigours of road and railway competition and today they are a place
