Hi all.
I have been lucky enough to find two lovely little streams which contain a head of wild brown trout. I was wondering if there is anyone out there who has experience of approaching landowners regarding getting their permission to fish?

All advice welcome

Many thanks

Welcome to the Forum.


What part of the country are the two streams in? The reason I ask is that attitudes and values can vary widely.

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Save the softmouth trout

Welcome to the forum

I lived through a war zone on that question

Many thanks for replying...both waters are in the Herts / Beds area...as far asi can make out neither are under control of any angling clubs...to be hones they are so small you can almost jump across them...but they hold wild brown trout

If you know who the landowner is, a polite call and the odd bottle of hooch may serve. has worked for me recently.

regards

Vince

Lucky man, perhaps!

Farmers are generally far more approachable than is often thought. Much of my work and play involves cold calling farmers to introduce myself and explain what the MFA does and what we would like to do on their river.

So the answer is to get an OS map of 1:25000, which shows field boundaries albeit at a small scale and the majority of farm names and guess which farms have land (and possibly the fishing rights, though this does not always follow) on the river and go and knock at their door. Try not to choose a livestock market day and best not to turn up in a sparkling, top of the range Merc!

Introduce yourself (I add "and you won't know me from Adam!") and explain your interest and ask if they have fishing on the said river. Tell him that you, alone, would like to fish their river/stream and what a good guy you are; not going to break down fences, leave gates open etc. With the map you can usually get them (the better sighted ones at least) to mark on their boundaries.

Now you have to deal with the elephant in the farm yard which is what do you offer to pay, should you get that far. The farmer will probably have no idea of it value and leave it up to you. It does depend very much on the stream and how much fishing (double or single bank) he is able to offer you access to but unless it is a short stretch then anything less than a fiver sounds pretty mean. Alternatively you can ask if you could walk his fishing to guage whether it is worth fishing and what it might be worth on a day ticket basis and report back to him.

Often though it is necessary to speak to several farmers to get enough double bank fishing (on small streams, it is essential to have both banks so that you do not "poach" the other bank's water) and so you might need to find out the name and addresses of several farmers, which your first farmer will know (they are usually related or have a feud running with them!).

Have fun, it is not that difficult.

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"The sun was so delightfully warm, and the stone, which had been sitting in it for a long time, was so warm, too, that Pooh had almost decided to go on being Pooh in the middle of the stream for the rest of the morning."

www.monnow.org

If they are the two streams I am thinking off in the SE Beds/Herts area good luck to you, they do indeed have a good population of brownies with some sizable ones lurking. One of the streams was written about by Dick Walker in his book "Drop me a line". There are some trout in the Ivel as well, indeed double figure brownies were caught there in 1960's. Good luck with getting permission.