Reports are flying around that the European Commission is planning to bring all anglers under the Common Fisheries Policy. This is not the case. Anglers fishing in freshwater or on the shore will be free to continue as they always have done. Across Europe, there are some recreational anglers who do large-scale deep sea fishing and catch types of fish that are threatened due to low stocks, such as cod. In Germany anglers catch the equivalent of about 50% of Germany’s cod quota in the North Sea. So for certain types of fish caught in certain circumstances, then there will be a need to register those catches. But if we look at the types of fish caught recreationally in the UK, particularly South-West England, where this has got a lot of attention, and those that are subject to the sort of management plans we are talking about, we see that there is little overlap. The fish targeted by anglers are on the whole not the same as those targeted by commercial fisherman (hake, cod, plaice, eel, sole all have long-term management plans in the UK).
Just made a small change to be more accurate about the maths of the German quota.