Angler and fish relations in the UK: Ethics, aesthetics and material semiotics

Freshwater angling is one of the most significant leisure activities in the UK. In 2009, for example, freshwater anglers’ gross expenditure in England and Wales was £1.18 billion, generating 37,386 jobs (Radford et al., 2009). Despite such spending power, and the shear popularity of angling (see Mordue, 2009), it is relatively rarely researched, sitting ‘uncomfortably’ between the different policy and academic foci of sport, leisure, recreation and environment. This chapter goes some way towards redressing that anomaly, and, using a material semiotics approach, situates angling in all these contexts as it examines the social and natural relationships between anglers and fish across the main UK freshwater-angling codes: coarse angling and game angling. From here the question is asked: are wild fish social animals deserving ‘sporting justice’ or natural beings deserving absolute protection from that human corruption we call angling?