A lifeline has been thrown to a plan to create a recreational sea angling fishery in the estuaries of the rivers Stour and Orwell on the borders of Essex and Sufolk.

Kent and Essex sea fisheries committee meeting in Thurrock yesterday (January

14) refused to follow last month’s decision (January 26) by the neighbouring Eastern sea fisheries joint committee to reject the plan.

Instead it called for more evidence to show why the facility, which will bring new business to the area, should not be created. 

The Eastern committee had asked fishing organisations and individuals in East Anglia what they thought of the plan.  There were 120 responses, only 31 opposed it while the other 89, including some from the local commercial fishing industry, all supported some measure of change.

Now the plan will be examined further at a meeting to be arranged by the Kent and Essex committee in the next six weeks, with sea anglers and commercial fishermen

Local anglers, supported by the National Federation of Sea Anglers, spent 18 months preparing the plan for the new fishery.  Their proposal is to develop some eight miles of the Stour and Orwell estuaries upstream from Harwich, for recreational angling rather than commercial fishing as at present.