SC(3) - AIW137

Sustainability Committee

Inquiry into access to inland water in Wales

Dear Members,

I write on behalf of myself and my wife to express our views as anglers and to request that these views are taken into account when any debate on access to inland waters takes place in the Assembly.
My wife and I are both members of the Teifi Trout Association and fish the River Teifi regularly.
When fishing the Teifi we have been alarmed at the behaviour of canoeists and rafters who take delight in disrupting and shouting abuse at licence paying anglers who are pursuing their hobby.
It is to be hoped that interested parties can in the long term come to mutual agreement about sharing such wonderful amenities such as rivers and lakes.
We would like to put to you the following additional points if we may;

1.Paddlers like to assert they have little or no access to running water in Wales yet they have free navigation on some 25% of rivers via the considerable tidal reaches.

2.We believe the Welsh Canoe Association has withdrawn from a number of voluntary agreements in order to claim poor access rights. They continue however to give ingress and egress points on their website which in effect incites illegal trespass.

3.We think we are right in saying we believe from information we have that allowing paddlers unlimited access to Welsh rivers is likely to be unlawful with respect to the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act (1975) which protects spawning fish and, in the case of salmon and sea trout their redds, from disturbance.

4.The financial contribution by anglers be they Welsh or any other nationality is huge whether it be from an Environmental Agency (EA) Licence (currently £70 p.a.), angling club subscriptions (we pay £290 p.a.), shops, accommodations, caravan sites etc.

In addition the volunteers who devote their labour to improve water habitat and wildlife, water quality deserve praise and fair treatment.

5. The WCA appears quite intransigent, refusing to compromise in its insistence on unfettered access to all waters, everywhere. We believe anglers and paddlers in the long term will have to debate, discuss, compromise and reach agreement on co-existence on inland waters.

6. To reward current trespass by changing the law seems wrong and the prospect alarms riparian owners and angling clubs.

7. When paddlers say licences and subscriptions are to pay for fish taken from rivers they ignore all coarse anglers who return 100% of their catch and a large proportion of game anglers who now practice catch and release (to help improve fish stocks).
Paddlers pay zero except of course those that pay commercial enterprises for trips in a canoe or raft!

8. Golf courses are commercial enterprises and are rightly excluded from the CRoW Act. Rivers should be excluded for the same reason.

9. In the hopefully unlikely event that the law is changed, riparian owners and angling clubs would quite rightly demand considerable compensation for the reduction in value of their assets and the derogation of their leases.

Finally let me say that we have fished since 1985 and I have never written a letter like this; my strength of feeling is very high.
I trust the Sustainability Committee of the Welsh Assembly will read my points and find them, along with I'm sure many other anglers' opinions persuasive enough to maintain the status quo on access to inland waterways and encourage dialogue and by dialogue voluntary agreements to prevail.

Yours Faithfully,

Gino Vasami
Janice Vasami