Featured Attractions

Featured Attractions

Salmon and Trout Association

Cast away!

The Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA), who fight for the future of game angling is holding fly fishing demonstrations & competitions again this year at most fairs, along with their hugely popular 'Have a Go' sessions.

The Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) represents the interests of the UK’s game anglers, fishery owners and managers and affiliated trades.  They represent all issues relevant to angling and fisheries legislation, regulation, management and conservation.

They have a close working relationship with Government departments and agencies, advising them over fisheries and angling matters and influencing their decision-making processes on behalf of their membership.  infact, they represent everyone with an interest in aquatic environment.

S&TA has 15,000 individual and 85,000 club-based members, and they are active in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. They have close links with Europe through the European Angling Alliance.

Game angling in the UK is a hugely diverse sport relying on a wide range of river and stillwater habitats. A collective resource which is at the mercy of matters beyond the single angler’s control.

Matters including, excessive water abstraction, land management practices, drainage, diffuse pollution, urban run-off and inadequately treated sewage, together with the inevitable confrontation between different water users in an overcrowded island.

It is more important than ever, therefore, that game anglers have a strong and effective organisation representing them when decisions are taken over the management and conservation of our wetlands.

The Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) is the only organisation representing the interests of game anglers and fishery owners at the highest level – within Government departments and agencies.

Although established over 100 years ago, the original brief for S&TA was to improve the salmon and trout fisheries of the UK, following degradation caused by the Industrial Revolution. Little has changed in the association’s work today, except that the drivers for degraded fisheries habitat have transferred from the heavy industry of yore to the more modern impacts of today.

Water
S&TA represents angling and fisheries interests on Defra stakeholders’ groups concerned with the Water Framework Directive and delivery of Catchment Sensitive Farming, and with Ofwat over the PRO 9 water pricing round, in which the Regulator decides how much money is available to water companies to spend on environmental programmes from 2011.

These are vital issues over which fisheries interests must have credible influence, to ensure the UK's waterways are managed and conserved for the benefit of dependent species as much as people.

Fly Life
Monitoring is essential to gauge the success of aquatic management, and the association sees fly life as central to this process. S&TA currently hold the chair of the Riverfly Partnership, a group including the Natural History Museum and Buglife, whose brief is to increase awareness of aquatic fly life issues and to organise workshops in which anglers undertake basic training in invertebrate identification and monitoring techniques. This enables them to record insect numbers on local waters and report results to the EA.

Sheep Dips
Cypermethrin sheep dips are toxic insecticides designed to kill parasites, but in concentrations as low as 1 part per billion, they cause devastation to aquatic invertebrate populations, and also damage the reproduction and juvenile life stages of salmonids. S&TA has lobbied for a ban on cypermethrin since 1997, and the recent Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s decision to suspend the marketing licence marked a significant milestone in fisheries NGO influence over environmental issues.

S&TA has now to continue the fight until cypermethrin is banned permanently in favour of the viable alternative sheep treatments already available to farmers.

Access
Other important issues recently include the attempt by the British Canoe Union to gain legal access to all waterways in the UK. S&TA continues to lobby hard for voluntary joint access agreements for water users, rather than a blanket right for any one sport to run roughshod over riparian rights – a view for which the Government has since confirmed its strong support.

Anglers are regulated by the EA and provide £18.5m net of their £30m fisheries’ budget through licence fees. Anglers also enter legal access agreements with riparian and fishery owners, for which privilege they pay handsomely. Much of the revenue generated is invested back into river and stillwater management, restoration and conservation projects. 

All S&TA asks is that other water users are licensed, regulated and contribute into funding coffers in similar fashion, so that everyone enjoys a level playing field.

Salmon, Trout, Sea Trout and Grayling Management
S&TA advise and influence both nationally and internationally over the management of evey game fish species in the UK. About issues as diverse as the implementation of the EA’s Trout and Grayling Strategy and the closure of the Irish Republic’s drift net salmon fishery, which impacts stocks destined for many English and Welsh rivers.

The association is currently embarking on a consultation period with the EA over their future strategy for migratory fish.

Education
Education is a priority within S&TA, highlighted by the publication of the Brown Trout Big Book this year. The book was distributed to 11,000 primary schools throughout England, introducing them to the aquatic environment through the life cycle of the brown trout.

This is the start of a Hearts and Minds campaign, which the association sees as a more positive method of countering any future anti-angling action rather than being purely reactive at the time. Meanwhile, it continues to introduce 3,000 newcomers every year through our one-day courses organised through S&TA's extensive branch system.

S&TA is now well into 200 years of operation, and will continue to represent the interests of all those involved in game angling and fisheries management wherever and whenever the need arises.

Above: A fine specimen of a Rainbow Trout.

Salmon and Trout Association will be appearing at the following shows:

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