As many members will already be aware the Angling Trust was recently formed
as the new, single organisation to represent all game, coarse and sea anglers and angling in England. The formation of Angling Trust brings with it a positive new future for angling. For the first time ever, there is a single body to take cohesive action to solve all the problems that affect our sport.

We applauded its formation but were recently somewhat alarmed to see the low level of membership and the fact they were having to scale back their operations.

Only 1% of anglers have joined to date and we have therefore offered our full support to their Board to help them increase their numbers.

Mark Lloyd Chief Executive has just submitted the following press release.

"Press Release from the Angling Trust
Angling Trust £1,000 Prize Draw for New Members
Immediate Release
Friday 14th August 2009


The Angling Trust has announced a prize draw for new members signing up in the next month. Every adult member who joins the Angling Trust between 1.00pm on Friday 14th August and 5.00 pm on Friday the 18th of September will be entered into a prize draw to win £1,000 of tackle vouchers from the 2009 Daiwa Catalogue. The Fishing Magic and Fish and Fly leading angling web sites have already agreed to promote this prize draw to their full database of members and to give this membership drive their full support.

Following the recent announcement of restructuring, the Angling Trust Board met yesterday to review the new business plan for the remainder of 2009 and to develop plans to increase the rate of recruitment of individual members to the Trust. The Directors approved the revised plan, which involves cutting costs to ensure that the Trust does not end the year in deficit. The organisation was launched with very limited capital funding and therefore it can only operate with the funds which it receives in subscriptions, donations, fundraising and sponsorship.

The Trust will continue to campaign on anglers’ rights issues, fight for the protection and restoration of marine and freshwater fisheries, increase participation in angling, run national and international angling competitions and through its legal arm Fish Legal take action against polluters and others who damage fishing. Fish Legal is currently fighting 78 legal cases throughout the UK and is supporting hundreds of its member angling clubs and fisheries with free legal advice. The more members the Angling Trust and Fish Legal gets, the more it will be able to do.

Angling Trust Chief Executive Mark Lloyd said: “we hope that the incentive of being in a draw to win £1,000 of tackle will help recruit all those anglers who have been meaning to join up for some time, but haven’t yet got round to it. The Angling Trust will be what anglers make it; we need much more support if we are to protect and promote angling in the future. We are very grateful to Daiwa, Fishing Magic and Fish and Fly for their support of our recruitment drive.”

Daiwa Marketing Director Robin Morley said: “Daiwa UK is very keen to do everything we can to make the Angling Trust a success and we have supported the organisation in many ways this year with prizes for raffles and sponsorship of the recent newsletter. We believe that the Angling Trust is vital for anglers and for all angling, including the trade.”

The Board welcomed the recent support of leading figures in angling, including John Wilson and Martin Bowler, for a united body to represent all anglers, and will be arranging a meeting with them shortly to hear their ideas for the future of the Angling Trust."

We see a united body acting on behalf of all anglers well worth supporting and would urge our members to support the Angling Trust by joining and perhaps even being lucky enough to win a £1000 voucher!

Many thanks.

The Team at Admin

http://www.anglingtrust.net/

A great incentive there! Nice one.

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The Angling Trust needs YOU!

Its a sad reflection that they have to offer a cash prize to get anglers to at least give the Trust a chance by paying their twenty pounds.

There has been heated debate for weeks now on Talksport at the weekends with Keith Arthur . He more or less says its a dead goose , he has been one of there biggest supporters since the formation , but even he is having his reservations now . Next to visiting people at there home and getting new members there and then , it aint gonna happen..

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[SIZE="4"]BRITISH BY BIRTH , SCOTTISH BY THE GRACE OF GOD..[/SIZE]

Surely for the sake of £20 it's worth giving them their best shot. Who else have we got??

We asked Mark Lloyd about this and he stated

"The AT is the representative body for anglers in England; there are governing bodies in Wales (Federation of Welsh Anglers, Welsh Federation of Sea Anglers, Welsh Salmon and Trout Angling Association, Welsh Federation of Coarse Anglers) and in Scotland (similar acronym soup) who have resisted our offer to create a UK-wide body. We are hoping that when we are firing on all cylinders that they will agree to become national branches of a UK body.
Therefore, we are restricted in what we can do in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Fish Legal, the old ACA, which acts as our legal arm in England, does operate UK-wide however and has recently been doing a lot of work in Scotland. Anglers in England wishing to support its work can join AT and a portion of their subscription is paid to Fish Legal."

Hope this clarifies the regional issues.

Admin

Too many cooks me think

---------- Post added at 06:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:44 PM ----------

As stated above there not doing anything for Scotland , No disrespect but you can keep your angling bodies and rod licences , we have our problems up here as well but hopefully the individual clubs/ owners etc will get there acts together.

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[SIZE="4"]BRITISH BY BIRTH , SCOTTISH BY THE GRACE OF GOD..[/SIZE]

and if they dont.......... goose will be cooked and to late to do anything about it ,.............. not having a go personally but its attitudes like that down here that pees me off about the angling trust , i dont think people realise how much it would cost to take a polluter etc privately to court to gain compensation for whatever act thay had done,and not gaurenteed of getting that anyway ,i think in all the years that the ACA as it was hasonly ever lost one case,anglers need to get off there arses and join because they are our voice along with martin salter MP, without support angling one day may no longer be ,no point joining then is there ...................

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WHEN YOU LEAVE THE RIVER, TAKE NOTHING, AND LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINT'S!!!

THA CAN TELL A YORKSHIREMAN ,BUT THA CAN'T TELL HIM MUCH !!

Sent cheque but heard nothing yet.

Personally think all anglers should join, it is for anglers benifit after all.

Anglers probably think they,ve paid enough already with buying their licence, that why i think its been slow for anglers to join.

Hope im still in the draw?

Local club of mine had its river polluted about 3 times in last ten years , each time a different farmer , my club went down the road of going to court ( won each time ) never cost us a penny . I know where your coming from but not all clubs sit on there arses . Infact i can honestly say of all the clubs in and around my area are all well run and on the ball regarding these matters .

PS. Angling in Scotland will always be there , cant speak for the rest of Britain , you may have a point , but then again it might be a ott statement who knows . Good luck with the crusade

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[SIZE="4"]BRITISH BY BIRTH , SCOTTISH BY THE GRACE OF GOD..[/SIZE]