Educational advice & Careers

Further Education (FE)

Burbot An extremely useful and increasingly popular means of developing a career based around angling is within the fields of fisheries and aquatics. There are several means of doing this, and the range of options is set out in the Institute of Fisheries Management booklet on this subject.

In England there are several county-based FE colleges (formerly agricultural colleges) that offer course in fisheries, aquatics and fisheries management. They include Sparsholt (Hampshire), Brooksby (Leicestershire), Hadlow (Kent) and Rodbaston (Staffordshire) colleges. Further details of the Rodbaston courses can be obtained at www.rodbaston.ac.uk.

Each college offers full-time fishery management and aquatics courses at First Diploma (1-year) and National Diploma (2-year) levels.

Higher Education (HE)

The colleges also offer two-year Higher National Diploma courses. These open up a far wider range of employment opportunities, as well as providing a framework for progression from Further to Higher Education, with the employment benefits which stem from this. In conjunction with allied academic institutions, there is now the chance to build on the HND course for a further year, leading to an Honours Degree.

Careers

The Further Education and Higher Education courses would help the better students gain employment as (amongst others):

Fishery inspectors & fisheries officers, working for the Environment Agency and other government agencies
Managers of commercial fisheries, fish farms and shops selling ornamental fish
Angling journalists
Fisheries consultants, advisors and field staff (employed or self-employed)
Teachers and research workers

Angling-Based Opportunities

There are very few full-time jobs in angling itself, although there are occasionally some openings in industries that depend on the sport. For example, there may be some opportunities for young or largely unqualified people in:-

Fishing tackle shops that require staff to help serve customers
Angling magazines, which need junior staff
Tackle manufacturers, wholesalers and importers requiring warehouse personnel, drivers, and other personnel
Commercial fishery owners who employ bailiffs
Fish farmers who employ manual workers

The qualifications and qualities required would be somewhat different in each case.