Angling Is Cruel! No it's not! Yes it is! No...

I've been away, in Manchester, for a long weekend/short week break and I'll probably post more on this later but while I was there I overheard a conversation between two children aged probably between six and eight years; the gist of their conversation was that Angling Is Cruel! From what they said they had obviously been told this by their teacher (or other person in authority) and they accepted and believed it.Without knowing exactly what was said, in what context, by whom and for what purpose I wouldn't like to say that these children had been subjected to anti-angling propaganda or had been indoctrinated but it was obvious that they believed this point of view almost as a matter of faith and I find this sad. I don't just find their pov sad because I disagree with it (Yes, I am an Angler!) but because this issue is a highly emotive one and almost everybody has an opinion but rarely are these opinions (pro or con) based on fact and even more rarely are they rational or particularly well thought through.



Please 'stay with me' on this one because although I am an angler I would like to dispel a few myths, raise a few issues, put forward my own opinion and more importantly let you know the thought processes by which I have arrived at my opinion.



About me... As well as being an angler I am also a keen amateur naturalist ecologist and environmentalist, a hill-walker and lover of nature, the countryside and all the 'beasties' that live in it including the fish that I fish for. Is this a paradox? I don't think so. I have never yet met an angler, young or old, who wasn't interested in the wonders of nature and who didn't care about animals, birds and of course, fish.



Lead shot poisons swans - fact or fiction? Well, it's true that swans can suffer from lead-poisoning after ingesting lead shot but angling weights are no longer made from lead and this change was led by pressure from the anglers themselves. Most 'true' anglers voluntarily switched to non-toxic shot 25 or more years ago! Even before that the amount of lead shot lost by an individual angler during the course of a season was infintissimally small and the amount lost by all the anglers in the country could not have added up to much and could not have had any significant impact.



Anglers' nylon line kills animals. That's certainly possible but again most anglers are aware of this and take care not to leave nylon lying around. Indeed, most angling clubs (certainly the ones I belong to) have a policy that any angler found leaving any litter will be have his/her membership revoked. The clubs I belong to clubs go even futher and say that any angler not clearing up litter whether or not he/she dropped it will be barred. Plastic bags, plastic loops and plastic netting pose a much greater danger to wildlife and are found as a result of agricultural practices, accident or left by the casual visitor to the coutryside.



Angling is cruel because fish feel pain (and fear). This has been the subject of much 'No they don't/Yes they do' debate. I don't know exactly what fish feel. I do know that fish are a cold-blooded animal living in an environment that is totally unlike ours and that it is wrong to anthropomorphise them and say that they experience anything exactly the same way that we do. From many years experience and observation I can say that if they do feel pain they appear to quickly recover from it and/or 'shrug it off' - they have to in order to survive. I can also say that fish do experience alarm in the presence of danger such as potential predators and again they quickly recover once the danger has passed - they would be eaten if they did not experience such alarm and they would starve if that alarm did not quickly pass!


Okay, I think it's time to move on and talk about the three basic types of fishing...


Coarse Fishing is the name given to angling for fish which are considered inedible. This is a popular sport/pastime and when caught the fish are released back into the water. Is it ethical to catch fish purely for personal enjoyment? Or is it cruel? I think that this is an entirely personal judgement-call. Each individual should have the right to decide for themselves. If you have any qualms about it then don't do it but you should not try to make that decision for anyone else.

I will say again that most anglers care passionately about and for the fish they catch (or try to catch) and certainly fishery owners do because they have a financial stake in looking after the wellbeing of their fish.

In my opinion coarse fish must rank among the most loved and pampered of all cold-blooded animals with the routine use of landing- and keepnets of such delicate softness that you would have no qualms about carrying a newborn baby in them. The use of unhooking mats is 'de riguer' and again most of these could double as changing mats or matress for a baby. A lot of anglers also carry with them antiseptic creams just in case they should accidentally scratch their beloved carp!

For me the most important questions that one should ask oneself before contemplating banning a pastime that is enjoyed by approximately five million people in the UK are:

* do I know enough about this to have formed a rational argument against it?

* do I have the right to remove other peoples freedom of choice just because I wouldn't do it?

* do I object to coarse fishing just because 'they' do it for personal enjoyment?

That last question is a 'biggie' because it leads to another question - 'If I do object to angling for pleasure do I also object to angling for food?' Which leads us on to the other two forms of angling Game (Trout/Seatrout/Salmon) and Sea where the fish caught are often taken 'for the table'.


Game anglers are extremely aware of the environmental issues that affect their sport because their fish (compared to the total number of coarse fish species) are that much rarer and species like salmon and seatrout are subjected to so many outside pressures that coarse fish are not. The two clubs/associations that I belong to between them seed 70,000 salmon fry into the river system each year - not just to enhance their sport but to redress the ecological damage done over the years by licenced and un-licenced netsmen satisfying the public demand for these extremely tasty fish. This work is voluntary and wholly funded by the anglers themselves and is carefully carried out under the watchful gaze of and with the approval of the Environment Agency(EA). The EA believe that this is a good thing to do but does not have sufficient funds to do it itself. In addition these clubs also carry out regular maintenance of the river bed (to give the fish a reasonable chance to spawn) and regular maintenance of the banks to the benefit of wildlife, anglers and non-anglers alike.

A word here about the EA... The EA is a government-established body whose job includes managing the welfare of rivers and waterways in this country. In part the work of the EA is funded by fees paid by anglers for a licence (a legal requirement) to use rod and line to catch fish and with over 4 million licence holders this is a sizeable amount of money. But still the EA is dreadfully under-funded and does not have the manpower to carry out it's duties without the aid of anglers. Sir David Bellamy, naturalist, described anglers as 'the eyes and ears of the British waterways'.


Sea anglers have for a long time been lobbying the Government for a review of commercial fishing practices, size-limits and quotas. Why? Because they were the first to see the reduction in size and numbers of sea fish visiting our shores and they were the first to understand the implications.

So, let's move on... We have asked the questions 'Do I object to angling for pleasure?' and 'Do I object to angling for food?' Let's assume that the answer to both of these is 'Yes'. Where do we go from here? Well, if you object to angling 'for the table' you must also object to commercial fishing for food!
Most commercial fishing as we all know is done by trawling fleets. What is less well known is the ecological impact of trawling; after all why should we even be aware that the innocent breaded or battered fishfinger was once a fish at all? I think that we should be aware.

Between 2002 and 2005 a study was carried out by Government scientists on commercial fishing practices by English and Welsh commercial vessels operating in the English Channel, Western Approaches, Celtic and Irish Seas; this study discovered that in this time an estimated 186million fiish, weighing 72,000 tons, were caught - now that's a lot of fish! Sadly, of these fish approximately two-thirds were discarded as being under-sized or the 'wrong' type of fish (ie they had less commercial value than the 'target' fish). These fish did not survive being dumped back into the sea!
Hmm... that fishfinger is starting to look a little less 'innocent' now, isn't it?

And what of the fish that were retained? How did they make it onto the shelves? Caught by the hundedweight(s) the fish at the bottom of the net would have suffered crush injuries and they would all have been deposited on the deck gasping for oxygen. Those that did not die from being crushed or from asphyxiation would have been gutted alive. I do not say this to shock you but to raise your awareness that just because you buy your fish from a supermarket and just because it no longer looks like a fish you cannot disassociate yourself from reality and before you atempt to decide whether angling is cruel you should take an honest look at how the food you eat is produced. At least when I take the occasional fish 'for the table' I despatch it quickly with a blow to the head! I understand and care about the fish that I eat and I respect them!

I wonder if those children in Manchester were told all about the fishfingers served up in the school canteen?

The purpose of this article was to raise your awareness and allow you the reader to consider whether or not angling is cruel on a rational basis rather than just on an emotional level. I may have given you something to think about or I may have put you off eating fish for life... I don't know. I have made my choice - I do occasionally (not often) eat fish products from a supermarket but I do at least know how those fish got to be 'au gratin-ed'!

I am an angler and I fish with care and respect!