The Glorious Sixteenth: Why the Start of the River Season Still Matters

For many coarse anglers, the 16th of June is more than just a date in the diary. It is a feeling.

It is the smell of river water in the early morning. It is a rod bag packed the night before. It is bait boxes checked twice, floats shotted up, hooks replaced, and the quiet excitement of knowing that, after three long months, the rivers are open again.

The traditional coarse fishing close season has been part of angling life for generations. Running from 15 March to 15 June inclusive, it still applies to rivers, streams, drains and some protected stillwaters and canals in England and Wales. Its purpose is simple enough: to give coarse fish a period of reduced disturbance during spawning time, when adult fish, eggs and young fry are at their most vulnerable.

By June, chub have usually recovered from their spring spawning, making them one of the great early season targets for river anglers returning to running water.

For older anglers, or those who grew up before commercial fisheries became such a big part of the sport, the close season had a very different feel to it. You did not simply switch to another local carp lake and carry on as normal. In many areas, when the season closed, coarse fishing stopped. There was a forced pause. Three months of reading the Angling Times, cleaning reels, repainting floats, tying hooks to nylon, walking the river without a rod, plumbing the local lake and wondering what might be waiting when the season opened again.

That is why the 16th became almost magical. It was a release from abstinence. A return to fishing . A first cast into a swim that had been rested by law, by tradition, and by time.

Things changed through the 1990s and early 2000s. The close season was removed from most enclosed stillwaters in 1995, and later from most canals. Commercial fisheries grew rapidly, and with them came a very different type of coarse fishing. Many of these waters are carefully managed, stocked, fed, netted, aerated and monitored. Fishery owners can make their own decisions about spawning closures, stock levels, angling pressure and fish welfare.

Rivers are different. They are living, moving systems. Fish can travel between club stretches, private banks, towns, drains and navigation channels. No single owner manages the whole stock. A commercial carp lake can be closed for a week if fish are spawning in the margins. A river system is not so easy to control.

For many anglers, June 16th meant one fish and one fish only: tench. Before the close season was removed from most stillwaters in 1995, we had to wait patiently for the chance to fish for this magnificent summer species.

That difference sits at the heart of the close season debate.

Many anglers have called for the river close season to be scrapped. They argue that the rule feels outdated when commercials are open all year. They point out that anglers are kept off the bank while boats, paddleboards, dog walkers and other river users can still disturb the water. They also argue that spring can offer some of the best fishing of the year, and that opening rivers all year might help clubs, tackle shops, coaches, match organisers and local businesses.

There is some truth in those points. Angling is not just a hobby; it is a serious rural economy. On the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, the start of the season brings anglers back in large numbers. Over the coming months they will book accommodation, visit pubs, buy bait, fill up with fuel, use tackle shops, hire boats and support small businesses across the area. For places such as Wroxham, Potter Heigham, Horning, Stalham, Beccles and many smaller villages, angling is part of the local rhythm and a real contributor to the economy.

The opening of the season also marks the return of river match fishing. For many competitors, this is a very different challenge from the high-weight pellet and carp matches that now dominate much of modern coarse angling. River matches test watercraft in its widest sense. Anglers must read flow, depth, colour, wind, weed, boat traffic and fish movement. They may need to catch small fish quickly, build a swim carefully, feed hemp and caster with accuracy, run a stick float down a crease, hold back a bolo float, or cast a feeder to a far-bank line.

It is not always about weight. It is about judgement.

A good river angler often has to think in layers. What is close in? What is down the middle? Are the roach on the drop? Are the skimmers over groundbait? Will the bream arrive late? Is there a bonus tench under the far bank? Can a perch be tempted from the cover? That mixture of skill, patience and problem-solving is one of the great joys of river fishing.

But there is another side to the argument too. Would removing the close season really bring large numbers of anglers back to rivers? Or would many still choose the reliability, comfort and catch rates of commercial fisheries?

River fishing is not struggling simply because of the close season. In many areas, stocks are under pressure from pollution, abstraction, habitat loss, predation, barriers to fish movement, saline incursion, invasive species and changing weather patterns. Some rivers that once seemed full of roach, dace and chub now feel far less certain. Asking whether anglers should be allowed to fish them all year is fair. But asking why there are fewer fish for them to catch may be even more important.

Beautiful Broads perch. Each June, the start of the river season brings anglers flooding back to Norfolk and Suffolk, giving a welcome boost to local businesses across the Broads.

That is why this debate is not as simple as tradition versus progress. The close season may feel old-fashioned to some, but rivers are not commercial fisheries. They are shared, open, vulnerable systems. If all-year river fishing ever came in, who would manage the local impacts? Who would decide when spawning fish needed protecting? Who would monitor the pressure on sensitive stretches? Who would step in when a river was low, warm, polluted or already under stress?

These are not impossible questions, but they are real ones.

And yet, whatever side of the debate you sit on, it is hard to deny the romance of the glorious sixteenth. There is something special about that first trot down with a stick float, watching the tip dip and glide as the line peels from the reel. There is something timeless about casting to a swim you have been feeding quietly for a few evenings, wondering whether the fish have found it. There is something deeply angling about sitting beside a river at dawn, after months of waiting, with the whole season ahead of you.

Perhaps that is why the 16th of June still matters.

Not because every angler agrees with the close season. Not because the rule is perfect. Not because rivers are the same as they were thirty years ago.

It matters because it gives river fishing a beginning. - A line in the year.

A moment when thousands of anglers look towards running water again and feel that old excitement return.

For some, it is the start of a match season. For others, it is a return to the Broads, the rivers, the drains and the quiet places between towns. For many, it is simply the first chance to do something they have missed: make a cast, watch a float, feel a bite, and reconnect with the living river.

Long may excitement like that survive....