My understanding is that the EA have a right to control any inland water,
which theoretically probably includes fish ponds in gardens.

It may seem ridiculous, but as an extreme example, think of this.
You dig a pond in your garden, fill it with goldfish and one of those fish
has a lurgy that will kill other fish within days. A bird lands in your pond
for a drink, and gets that lurgy on its feet. It then flies off and lands on
a large fishery; the lurgy spreads to all the fish there, and so on. The EA
investigate, and if by chance they could track it back to your pond, they
could enter your garden and deal with the lurgy at source.
The EA tell us that most of the rod licence money goes towards this type of
water safety and other conservation tasks, and I for one am grateful for it,
as it helps to protect and improve my sport.
From your earlier posts Clive, I make an assumption that you may not have
been fishing for very long? When you have seen 100's of fish dead floating
on a lake or river, and the EA arrive to inspect and take rearguard action
to stop the spread, then the rod licence fee seems very worthwhile.
Good to know DLA qualifies for a reduced cost though. Hope you are finding
fishing a good hobby ('nutter' or not!).

As for sea fishing licences, well thats another story. Impossible to enforce
becasue of the many miles of coastline, and water borne pollutants are
already rife with all the s*** that gets dumped in the sea.

--
Regards, Ian



"clive" wrote in message
...
Hi all
I made a point about why do we bother we rod licenses a few days back, I
wasn't very clear unfortunately, my point is, on most of the fisheries
(especially here in south east wales ) they are mainly privately owned.
For example, we have Cefn Mably, Peterstone lakes and warren mill which
are pretty good venues.
Now with the exception of warrren mill, these lake were man-made by the
person who owns the land outright. They have made the lakes, stocked them
with fish at thier expense and the lakes are maintained by staff employed
at theses venues by the owners.
When you go there for a days fishing you obviously have to pay for the day
ticket, what I cannot see is why the EA have any right at all to go onto
this privately owned property and expect people to have rod licenses. This
means if I made a large pond in my own back garden, filled it with water,
kept it clean by using electric filters, then stocked it with fish,
according to the law I would need a rod license to fish in it.
I simply cannot understand the logic in this at all.
Clive