While seniors, juniors and disabled anglers boosted rod licence sales in England and Wales, helping the Environment Agency close the gap on income, there are some major concerns over adult fishing participation.
The rod licence figures for September have been encouraging in some quarters – with 779,036 licences sold being up by more than 2,000 on the same time last year – but have raised eyebrows in others.
Sales were also up marginally (0.26%) on August however income was down by 1.76%, although this is slightly less of a drop than the previous month.
The figures show that total income from rod licence sales to the end of September is £19,760,973, which is £335,500 less than last year although the number of unique anglers currently stands at 714,388, up 3,453 on the pervious 12 months.
The biggest concern is that, while senior, junior and disabled coarse sales are all up, adult two- and three-rod licences continue to fall while adult and senior salmon and sea trout licences have dropped noticeably (down 10.81% and 2.04% respectively).
Tom Sherwood, the EA’s Senior Advisor (Fisheries Partnerships and Business Strategy), said: “As with August, rod licence sales have performed well in September and we have further closed the gap on income and we are now ahead in sales compared to the same point last year.
“After a slow start to the year we have caught up month on month and, with the weather still set fair, there are further chances to continue to make further gains on sales and try and make some more in roads to that income deficit.
“What we have seen so far this year are the power of external factors on sales – the blisteringly hot summer and the World Cup will have proven a major reason/distraction for some not to pick up a rod (and buy a licence) this summer.
“Whilst we can argue that this is out of our hands, we have tried to be flexible with our comms and marketing, both nationally and locally, to try and work with these factors and of course keep pushing the message.
“Currently, the vast majority of our deficit income comes from the decline in sales of our main rod licence product, the adult annual coarse and trout two-rod licence. Those who read these monthly reports will know we have constantly stated the decline in the two-rod licence is one of our biggest concerns.
“To add further context, since the current rod licence structure came into being on April 1st, 2017, with the advent of the 365 licence and the three-rod licence, the two-od licence has declined from 403,456 in 2017/18 to 324,161 in 2025/26. At today’s prices this equates to a decline in income of £2.92m.
“Although the decline seems to have stabilised, reducing our customer churn rate to realise growth in this sector is where much of our focus in marketing and comms now lies, as we plan for the 27/28 rod licence campaign. In tandem with automatic licence renewal (which just passed its first anniversary) we are hopeful our efforts will begin to bear fruit.”