Hot Water

Anger over angling in Britain

Britain is regarded by many anglers as the home of the sweetest trout and salmon in the world. It is now also the center of a testy battle on whether fishing should be allowed at all.

The crusade against angling was launched this winter by the Hunt Saboteurs' Association, a militant wing of the animal-rights movement. The H.S.A. is an intense, zealous group of moral commandos who have been disrupting fox and stag hunts since 1963. (Their campaign has been categorized by one neo-Wildean observer as "the implacable in search of the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.") In the latest issue of the association's magazine, H.S.A. Committee Member Ralph Cook described Britain's 3,380,000 recreational fishermen as villains who lure "unsuspecting sentient creatures onto sharp-barbed hooks." The magazine called on the H.S.A.'s 3,500 members to frustrate anglers by peppering the water with pebbles, posting fake health notices at fishing spots and scaring potential catches away with underwater ultrasonic devices. For a lone fisherman, Cook suggested, "a nudge in the back works wonders," but that piece of counsel was blacked out in the magazine on the basis of legal advice and misgivings of committee members.

The National Angler's Council, which claims 750,000 members, would like Cook and his friends to fish in other waters. Says N. A.C. Executive Director Peter Tombleson: "We would not condone any violence. But we can't stand by the elbow of every angler to control him." Tombleson's alarm was echoed by Don Thompson, director of the Salmon and Trout Association, who says of his fellow fishermen, "These are not old codgers in pink coats riding on horses. These are young, active, fit people and they're not going to stand for being pushed around."