England - the Environment Agency: "Fisheries annual report 2021 to 2022"
In the previous decade up until the financial year 2019 to 2020, the number of people that went fishing and bought licences had declined each year. This led to a fall in our fishing licence income by approximately 12% and a drop in licence sales by over a third
Since 2020 COVID-19 has had wide ranging effects on society. When lockdown restrictions eased on 13 May 2020 people were keen to enjoy outdoor activities to improve their health and wellbeing. And as a result we saw an increase in people buying fishing licences. Subsequently in the financial year 2020 to 2021 we sold 1,090,068 licences to 958,279 individual anglers. This represented an increase of 17% on fishing licence sales and generated £24,583,342 income. As society returned back to a more normal footing in 2021 to 2022 we have seen angling participation rates and fishing licence sales return to pre pandemic levels.
