The Blog- Anglers National Line Recycling Scheme

This last week has seen some extremely worrying behaviour on the River Wye. This was in the form of, what is thought to be, asbestos products being dumped in the river. Dave fully explains this in his latest Vlog, if you want to check that out you can do so here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wt2pCTKdcw

There’s little doubt in our mind that this is in no way from anyone within the angling fraternity, or we hope thats the case! And it’s got us to thinking about what we can do, as anglers, to help keep our rivers and still waters in pristine condition. It’s a hot topic at the minute, climate change and the amount of plastics finding it’s way in to nature. As anglers we are no different to anyone else, we create waste. Hook packs, bait packaging, and so on. Adding to this the amount of line we get through between anglers from all angling disciplines must be incredible. There has to be an argument that river anglers go through more line than most. Just think about all those titanic battles with salmon in the spring, or monster barbel in the autumn. These species alone have the ability to strip yards of line and break you off in a split seconds notice leaving a trail of line its its wake.

There’s also that little issue of the odd miscast. Come on, we’ve all been there, “i’ll just get a little tighter to that over hanging tree on the far bank……oops, too close” . Again we’re left with less line on our spool than when we started. We try to retrieve as much as possible, attempt to retrieve our end tackle, nearly always to to avail. Then we re spool for the new season, we have multiple spools that need doing, especially for the mighty River Wye with all her snags, monster fish and fast flow.

So, what do you do with all this line that gets cut off, bitten off from knot tying excess, re-spools and so on? Straight in the bin? Or do you just leave it bank side in the hope that no one will know its you? After all it was only a little bit you left in the trees, right? Wrong! We’ve got to take our mess home.

Well we’re really pleased to say that the initiative run by The Anglers National Line Recycling Scheme takes that problem away for you. Any outlet, tackle shop or manufacturer that display their logo will take all of your old and discarded line for you and recycle it. So, take it home with you from the bank, don’t just stick it in the bin if you’re re spooling at home- just take to your local tackle shop and recycle it. And if they’re not part of the scheme they should be.

It’s the least we can do as anglers is to take our rubbish home, especially line. Theres nothing worse than walking the banks and seeing wildlife snared in discarded line. Don’t just send your old line to landfill via your bin, lets try and make a difference and get it recycled.

So go and check the scheme out here:

https://www.anglers-nlrs.co.uk/