Angling: Charting the rise and fall of the local leagues - Angling - Yorkshire Evening Post

I checked the old memory banks and came up with quite a few, most of which I competed in myelf.

The ones that came to mind were ones in the north, south and west of Leeds – Newtown, Sellers, Hemingway, Sammy Samuel, Kirkstall, Workshops, Conservative Federation and the Bramley Ward. My apologies for any that I have forgotten.

These leagues were run with each organisation fishing around four contests a year and they were all very well attended with an entry of less than 60 considered poor.

I had a call from Stan Warr recently who older readers will remember writing this column for a short while in the 1990s after the loss of the late Alan Howe but pressure of work meant that he had to give it up as he was at the time running a very successful haulage business and also the Pudsey Angling Centre where he now spends most of his time.

He too was concerned about the league closures for he and his late father Harry were strongly involved with the Bramley Ward and he very kindly sent me a wad of information about this group of anglers which is still going strong, although they are now down to a couple of dozen members and fish just one match a year on a commercial.

The Bramley Ward was formed around 1918 with a very strict set of rules for the membership was defined by the River Aire, for any club on the opposite side of the river from Bramley would not be considered.

From the first date up to the outbreak of war in 1939 the league prospered and went from strength to strength. They fished just four matches a year but had entries of over 200, enormous by today’s standards.

With yearly membership fees the league became quite wealthy and eventually they purchased the fishing rights to a number of venues, mostly on the River Swale and these included Pickhill, Holme on Swale, Ainderby, Baldersby and Skipton on Swale. After the conclusion of the war in 1945 the league continued to thrive with still more members joining and Stan recalls one contest where it took 14 coaches to take the anglers to their chosen venue at Pickhill for the annual match.

As I said earlier the rules were very strict, one of them being that all match entires had to be booked on the Friday night before the contest and Stan recalls one incident when he was in the Army in 1957 – it must have been National Service – when he unexpectedly received a 72-hour pass.

He arrived home early on a Saturday and immediately contacted the league secretary to see if he could compete in the match the following day. But the answer that he got was: “You know the rules, no chance, come back again when you leave the army”.

And this after he had bought the secretary a couple of pints as a sweetener!

The league rules are apparently set in stone and must not be broken, or even bent.

The league continued to do quite well through the 1980s but later went into decline with the advent of so many commercial fisheries opening and their many facilities and easy access were proving more attractive to the angler.

Stan often wonders what the old stalwarts of Bramley such as his father Harry, ex-Leeds president Norman Marsh and national champion Horace Seed would think of the current situation, but meanwhile the few remaining supporters of the Bramley Ward will battle on.

via yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk

THE DAILY CATCH http://fishingnews.posterous.com/angling-charting-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-loc I checked the old memory banks and came up with quite a few, most of which I competed in myelf. The ones that came to mind were ones in the north, south and west of Leeds – Newtown, Sellers, Hemingway, Sammy Samuel, Kirkstall, Workshops, Conservative Federation and the Bramley Ward. My apologies for ...