IT’S a crying shame that so many fishmongers have disappeared over the past ten years from our markets and high streets.

Supermarkets might sell a limited range but the majority are staffed by people who have little or no idea how to scale, clean or fillet a fish.

They just sell what’s delivered to them in huge trucks.

There is one chain which seems to have made a point of employing some men and women who actually know their trade but lost their jobs when the smaller retailers went out of business.

But in my experience it’s the only one.

Although buying can be an irritating prelude to the enjoyable process of cooking and eating fish it’s as nothing compared with the concept of trying to catch them with a rod and line.

The idea of sitting on a riverbank staring at a float and drowning maggots for hour after hour in all kinds of weather strikes me as plain depressing.

I can see positives in being out at sea and using cunning and sheer strength to land a writhing creature from the ocean deep on the deck of a boat.

But being perched on a box under an umbrella on the bank of the Leeds and Liverpool canal with a rod that’s longer than the canal is wide in the hope of catching something not much bigger than a sardine (the ones in tins, not the ‘giant’ variety you see on holiday in Portugal!) is about as attractive as self-harming.

I can see that anglers get plenty of opportunity to think about life, and that’s no bad thing.

But while it’s good to make time for contemplation in our frantic world, in practice canalside anglers are constantly having to move their rods to allow dog walkers, cyclists and runners to squeeze past them on the towpath.

It is great that there is so much life in our waterways these days thanks to the careful conservation work carried out over the past decade – not just by people employed by environmental bodies but by the anglers themselves.

And that brings me to another thing about anglers that is beyond my understanding.

The only possible reason I can think of for fishing on East Lancashire’s rivers is the idea that you will be able to catch, and later cook yourself a meal.

Yet last week the Environment Agency issued a statement reminding anglers of the byelaw which states that during the season from June 16 to October 31 they are allowed to fish for salmon in the River Ribble but are only to keep two salmon per person – during the whole four and a half months!

The others have to be returned to the water.

Obviously the law is there to ensure stocks grow and the river isn’t fished out. But clearly it relies enormously on honesty unless riverbanks are to be populated by a traffic warden-style army dishing out summonses.

It is unfathomable to me that having caught and tasted their two legal salmon anyone would want to then spend a whole summer reeling in examples of these most splendid fish – and chucking them back again.