The end of 2025 saw UK angling in a stronger position than of late, thanks to the ATA’s Take A Friend Fishing initiative and the latest rod licence figures for England and Wales.

The winter TAFF programme, which ran between December 20th and January 4th, 2026 was the best yet, with an incredible 65 per cent increase in registrations compared to 2024 and a conversation rate of views to entries of 44.4 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Environment Agency has reported that rod licence sales in England and Wales for the last month have shown a slight increase compared to November.

Sales for December were up 4.96 per cent on the same point last year (4.76 per cent in November) and income was up 5 five per cent (4.81 per cent in November).

Meanwhile, unique angler numbers rose by 4.71 per cent (4.53 per cent in November) on the same point last year with 778,637 anglers, compared to 743,598 the previous year.

The cold, clear weather for much of December may well have had something to do with the rise in participation.

At the same time, the EA has also recently released its Fisheries Annual Report for 2024 to 2025.

Thanks to the 832,000 licensed anglers in England and Wales, the EA has been able to: 

• Check 60,320 fishing licences 
• Make 769 successful prosecutions 
• Respond to 224 fisheries incidents involving dead or dying fish 
• Do 1,809 fish population surveys 
• Supply and stock 478,937 coarse fish 
• Work with over 350 different project partners 
• Complete 10 fish pass solutions and removed 25 weirs and barriers 
• Improve habitats for fish on 675km of rivers and protect habitats for fish on 474km of rivers 
• Enhance 204 hectares of stillwater fisheries and created 22 hectares of stillwater habitat 
• Carry out projects that benefitted 179,530 anglers