October 19

Angling Times signs up with the Trust

Mike Heylin and I had a really useful meeting with Steve Fitzpatrick and Kevin Wilmot, the new team at Angling Times. Steve very kindly took the opportunity to renew his Angling Trust membership and the guys came up with some great ideas for promoting our work through the paper.

We already have regular columnists Keith Arthur, Des Taylor and Dave Harrell as Angling Trust Ambassadors and now with Steve and Kevin in charge we reckon the relationship between the Trust and the Times will go from strength to strength.

Trading Partners

We had a big team out the Tackle and Guns show at the weekend as this is the premier UK trade show and we have a great working relationship with all the guys at DHP and with Naidre Werner and her crew and the Angling Trades Association.

Chairman Mike Heylin and I were guests at the gala dinner and I presented the National Fishing Month Award to Pete Aske from the sponsors Go Outdoors. You’ve got to admire our industry for putting on over 300 events that attracted nearly 14,000 people to try angling in the middle of the wettest summer on record with all the distraction of the Olympics to contend with. A truly heroic effort and well done to everyone involved.

On the second day we were joined by our finance manager Stuart Sharp and marine campaigns manager David Mitchell.  The T&G show is a great place to catch up with key people in angling and the guys did some good work nailing down some exciting projects  which we will be announcing later.

Being tackle tarts,  we all spent a fair bit of time sussing out some of the fabulous new products that are coming on stream. As you can see from these pictures the new fly rods from Daiwa and the technically brilliant Aero Big Pit reels from Shimano caught the eye as did some of the innovative items from Korum. It was also good to see the much loved Cox and Rawle brand of sea fishing hooks, rigs and lures re-launched under the stewardship of the experienced Fishing Matters boss Mark Hamnett.

The Angling Trust is working hard to support our tackle trade by developing a National Angling Strategy to get more people fishing and by campaigning on the key issues that will protect and improve our fisheries.