A BAA bailiffing success at Pershore

A good job has been done by one of our bailiffs. He had been checking things out at Pershore and came across six anglers, none of which were BAA members. He also had reason to suspect that some of them did not have rod licences either.

There was a group of four East European anglers, who refused to leave but said they would do in due course. The other two were local English anglers (middle aged men) with a young boy (less than 10 years old). One of the latter two threatened our bailiff with 'you can go and **** off or I'll throw you in the river, I fish here every day and I don't need a BAA card'.

Our bailiff stood his ground and told them they had to leave but sensibly withdrew from the river bank to the car park where he phoned Kevin Pearson the BAA Superintendent Bailiff.  Kevin contacted other local bailiffs but as he couldn't get anyone immediately, he then arranged for the bailiff to call the Police on 101 and to mention Operation Leviathan when giving details. The Police phoned back after 30 minutes or so and attended within the hour. They approached the anglers and assisted the bailiff to remove them from the water, giving strong warnings that if any of them were found there fishing without permission or without a rod licence, they would be arrested and prosecuted. The aggressive one soon changed his tune and fell over himself apologising to our bailiff and wanting to shake his hand. He also offered to look out for illegal angling activity when walking his dog and to report it to the BAA!

At this time three EA bailiffs turned up, it appears that they had been working in the area as a result of information being passed on by ourselves and other sources through Operation Leviathan. A fortunate coincidence, as they were able to speak to all of the anglers and get full details for further action as we believe that none of them had rod licences.

We also found out that the EA had dealt with a poacher near Hampton Ferry the same evening and were patrolling the area.

This was a good bit of work by our BAA bailiff and showed that by working together with the Police and the EA we can get the job done.

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