One of the weekly angling papers recently carried the headline ‘Don’t close our rivers!’, claiming that some anglers are calling for an extension of one month for this year’s river season.

Their reasons are that it will help the tackle trade during these difficult times and also give anglers more chance to fish after the recent winter weather which rendered many rivers unfishable.

I fully support local tackle shops, as I said only the other week, but is this not putting commercial gain before the welfare of fish?

And as far as the weather goes, surely this it is normal in winter.

I actually think that this is a backdoor way of doing away with the close season, and I am sure once the river season ends, we will be seeing headlines like ‘Close season must be abolished’.

This is one angler who thinks that the close season on our rivers should be upheld. There are plenty of commercial fisheries which remain open throughout the close season, so we can all go fishing.

But the rivers, and the fish, deserve a bit of peace and quite.

l IF you have any news, views or photos, you can contact me on 01865 725606 or email andrew@webber01865.fsnet.co.uk