Fishing in the United Kingdom: sustenance, but also pleasure

Many of you, friends of Training Centre Raya– London, are surely passionate about fishing and steal hours, sometimes even days from your free time to feel the thrill of the first tug, to witness the joyful sight of the sinking float, and to excitedly pull out the desired catch.

We won’t be able to tell you the full history, significance, and modern regulations of fishing in our host country in brief, but we will touch on a few interesting aspects of this captivating topic. We’d be delighted if you shared your impressions and photos of this beloved sport on our Facebook page!

Of course, historically speaking, fishing began out of hunger. In ancient times, people initially gathered what was washed ashore by the sea or river and discovered it was excellent food. Soon, they invented effective methods for catching swift fish—spears with specific shapes, hooks tied to lines, traps, river enclosures with dams, nets, and some peoples even used paralytic poison for fishing. They caught not only fish but also cephalopods, echinoderms, crustaceans, and everything that lived in the water. Many types of fish were used for food, ranging from bottom-dwelling plaice to sea bass.

The United Kingdom has been a leading country in fish catch not only for personal use and sustenance in individual settlements but also in the later-emerging industrial fishing, for which a fishing fleet was built. But it wasn’t always so. There are written records from 730 AD in the notes of Bede, a priest in Colchester, stating that the locals only caught eels by hand in the shallows, and a great famine occurred. Then the priest and his people gathered their nets and cast them further into the sea, and many fish of all kinds were caught in them, and thus the people saw the benefit of sea fishing.

In his book “Natural History of Fishes” from 1798, Bernard Germain Étienne de Laville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, a French nobleman, writes that if the total catch of the English and Scots were taken together, the United Kingdom would be the third fishing power in the world after the French and the Dutch.

Modern industrial fishing in our host country, according to data from 2019, for example, landed 724,000 tonnes of fish ashore. In view of preserving fish diversity, this is done in specific time periods and is strictly regulated by legislation.

Evidence of fishing for pleasure begins to appear in texts from the 15th century, dedicated to various fishing techniques. The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries led to the formation of a stable middle class. These were people with sufficient means who sought entertainment in their free time, and some of them devoted it to the pleasure of fishing. In the 19th century, various fishing clubs began to be founded, which, besides bringing together like-minded people, also contributed to the preservation of the country’s fish wealth by introducing rules and regulations to curb indiscriminate fishing.

With the development of transport, and more precisely railway transport, more and more natural beauties became accessible to anglers. And the revolution in materials complicated and enriched the technologies for making fishing gear. Nowadays, fishing is legal only through the purchase of a fishing licence and in compliance with the country’s legislation and the months prohibited for fishing.

We wish you successful fishing and good luck!

Translator’s note:
Original name of the French nobleman: Bernard Germain Étienne de Laville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède

Author: Iveta Radeva