Just found Steve Crowders blog, it raises some interesting points about the future of our sport and some opinions on what could be done to improve the situation.

Bank Fly Fishing For Reservoir Trout - A New Dawn - Part One | crowdersblog.com

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http://www.rutlandwaterflyfishers.co.uk/

Some interesting points.But If you put into the equation that there used to be a closed season for trout.So opening day was much more of an event than it is nowdays.And many in the coarse fishing world used to have a dabble at Flyfishing because their fisheries were closed.Now there's a very restricted coarse close season,mostly on rivers.So the opening day frenzy is no more.

Jim

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The Fishermans Friend is the Flirty Fly,Fickle Food for Fleeting Fish.

Hanningfield Res overcome the problem by introduceing any method which at the time horrified me, this was several years back and still exists today but it has done the fishery no harm at all, The fly fishermen still take far more fish than the guys using spinners, worms ect. I know a lot of people that said mixing the two together would never work includeing myself but we were all wrong and it has kept the fishery open and the quality of the fishing is outstanding and the prices are very reasonable for a good days sport.

Plenty of people still fish the 2 Farmoor reservoirs from the bank, where much of the best fishing can be found. Does this give us a clue ?

And I do wonder whether more competitions are the answer. Surely not biased special pleading, is it ?

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"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." - German proverb
JH based near Southampton

400 bank fishers a day on Grafham.
Sounds like combat fishing.

For a change I'm bored on the bus on the way yem. I can think of nothing worse than standing on the bank with 399 other folk! However, from a purely economical basis; at Grafham, 25 bankrods per day paying £22 per ticket for ten months of the year works out at roughly £167k revenue per annum before monies generated from boat anglers, comps, and other revenues such as the tackle shop. I don't know the stocking policy of the water but imagine it takes into account that such a nutrient-rich waterbody promotes the further growth of returned fish over winter; i.e. that they count the fish stocked in previous years that haven't been killed, less a percentage for predation by birds and pike and zander (that calc might also factor in maximum fish size for predation). Say every one of the bank anglers catches and kills 4 fish every visit, thats 30,417 dead trout. If each of those cost £2 as a stockie in that season, without predation and overwintering caveats above, the fishery would net over £100k, before staff and other overheads. Thats a simplification, of course, but perhaps a useful one to consider before anyone laments the 'new dawn'.

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Very silly article.

Why lament the decline of industrialised fish with as much charm as standing in line at the super market?

I lived near Rutland and Grafham for two seasons, and specifically avoided opening day because I found the shoulder to shoulder hordes so off putting.

That sort of angling pressure, and the intense stocking required to support it, is unsustainable and ecologically irresponsible in the extreme. I have no problem with stocked still waters (before that argument gets going), but they need to be managed with a degree of ecological sensitivity and an eye to the overall experience. Encouraging standing-room only bank fishing does neither and treats anglers like battery chickens, to be packed in as densely as possible to extract as much revenue as possible.

And anyway - so what if demand has died away a bit. The sector is like any other business: supply will track demand, and a lot of the more marginal, more poorly run fisheries may have to close, which is probably a good thing.