Angling during the World Wars

Angling took a back seat

During the First World War (1914 to 1918), angling’s governing body, the National Federation Of Anglers (NFA) suspended their annual English Angling Championship following the completion of their 1914 annual national championship match on the Trent at Willington.

The NFA cancelled all non-essential activities during wartime and focussed on the war effort, raising £1000 for two motor ambulances for service on the front line. They carried the words 'Presented by the National Federation of Anglers for Service with the British Army in the Field'. The NFA handed over one ambulance to Neville Chamberlain, who would lead Britain into war in 1939, eventually being replaced in that role by Winston Churchill.

Angling competitions took a back seat for the duration of the Great War. The angling fraternity answered the call of duty. It is on record that angler soldiers, when they could, caught fish to improve  food supplies near the front line. 

In 1917, the NFA received government recognition when the NFA’s then president, Jim Bazley was invited to serve on a government committee to inquire into the stocks of fish in the nation's waters, and to report whether, in case of necessity, they could be utilized for the purpose of food.

Hempseed controversy

Controversy split English angling following the introduction of hempseed by Belgian refugees during and after the First World War. This bait was thought to drug the fish and make them easier to catch. Anglers were divided on the issue. The sport of fishing got back to reasonable normality following the war but angling clubs had lost significant numbers of their youth membership and some top angling clubs and teams had to massively recruit and restructure.

Precious medals

Gathering storm clouds of war loomed on the horizon some 20 years later. Shortly after September 1939, the NFA cancelled the 1939 national competition. The government at that time, made a slight alteration in the law regarding the coarse fish close season. It was anything but a success. The following year, before they decided to renew it, the ministry wrote to the NFA and asked for its views. The federation's reply was overwhelmingly against a second tampering with the law. As a result, government dropped the idea. The wartime prohibition of cereals and similar products as ground bait was only to be expected. The federation willingly adopted this scheme, and all the NFA affiliated associations observed it loyally.

Once more, tackle manufacture came to an abrupt halt and most of the large factories turned to the production of munitions and the war effort. At the outbreak the NFA still had 27 newly struck medals in stock, but these mementos of a great occasion would not see the light of day for seven long years. The NFA were extremely lucky that these expensive medals survived the war. On the night of April 9, 1941 the factory workshop where the medals and the 'Daily Mirror Cup' were in storage, suffered a direct hit from German bombers. According to president Alf Waterhouse they 'miraculously escaped the nearby previous ruin by less than three paces, through the lucky protection of a thick brick wall which sturdily withstood the blast'.

Groves and Whitnalls, current holders of the second place Peek trophy, kept this at their brewery for 'safe keeping'. German bombs flattened the factory. Shortly after the raid, the trophy was found, according to  Major Peer Groves, ‘on the river bank a hundred yards or so away among some wreckage. It is knocked sideways a bit but is otherwise little the worse. Curiously enough it was standing on its plinth wedged around by a pile of bricks and broken concrete!'.

Some top anglers of that era also suffered in the intensive bombings. During the 1941 Sheffield bombing raids, the Luftwaffe destroyed Jack Cauldwells house along with his three English Angling Championship medals. Jack won the event in 1923. It is thought that Walt Daddy, the 1931 individual winner of the English Angling Championship had won enough money to buy a house in Hull. The Luftwaffe destroyed his home during the Second World War.  A bomb shelter saved Walt's family plus his precious medals and his individual trophy which he had taken there for safe keeping during the air raid. He lost everything else including his fishing tackle.

Bait rations

Upon the conclusion of the war, the 1945 match was hastily on the Trent at Newark for late September of that year. The match program, with just a typed list of competitors' names, carried a new title – ‘The Thirtieth National Angling Championship’. A decision had been made however at the May 1945 conference not to present medals in that years competition, until ‘the boys were home’ from the war.

Photo of 1945 national

Following the food restrictions imposed during the Second World War, anglers felt unable to use bread for groundbait so in 1945 some anglers used paper bags to get bait into their swim. Given that bread became officially rationed in 1946 and therefore could not be used the NFA decreed in their wisdom that the practice of paper bag baiting would also not be allowed in the All-England Angling Championship in the Witham, at Boston held on September 28 1946.

‘This is the ruling of the General Purposes Committee of the National Federation following the receipt of letters from the Notts Federation and the Nottingham and District Association, asking whether, in view of the decision of the conference that no ground bait other than maggots or worms be allowed, paper bag baiting might be permitted? The committee is satisfied however, that in light of opinions expressed already at Boston, such a proposal must have been defeated by conference and that only bait scattered by hand will, therefore, be allowed.’

Bread rationing continued until 1948 and rationing of some goods didn’t end until 1954.