Angling in and Around Weybridge: British Love of Fishing to Drive Anglers to Surrey this Spring

Angling remains a very popular leisure activity across Great Britain. As the warm weather returns, those with fishing gear flock to the vast fisheries and their own secret spots to cast a line and enjoy a day on the waterways. While enthusiasts will happily endure the colder, wet weather of the Autumn, Winter, and early Spring, as the warmer weather takes hold, many more opportunities arise for the wider public to get involved.

Not only is sitting out in warm weather preferable, but as fish are cold-blooded, warmer waters make for more active fish. With the most favourable month for fishing, according to Angling Direct, slowly arriving, here’s what anglers have been up to in the preceding chilly months before Spring and some of the top spots to look forward to for fishing in Weybridge and nearby.

Even when certain fish aren’t in season or the waterways are frozen over, people today don’t have to look far to enjoy a taste of the sport. One need only look to the internet or their TVs to get a dose of angling action. There are loads of British-made fishing shows, with one stand-out recent hit being “Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing”. The long-running show became so popular that it spun off with a very well-received tie-in book, “Life, Death, and the Thrill of the Catch”, and its own audiobook.

Away from TV, where the likes of Bob Mortimer, Paul Whitehouse, Robson Green, and Jeremy Wade continue to delight housebound anglers, fishing has seen a distinct rise in fandom online. Fishing livestreams, for one, have become ubiquitous for relaxation purposes. On the other hand, look at any online casino now, and you’ll see that it’s a fishing frenzy out there! The headline act of this rise is, naturally, Fishin’ Frenzy. The classic slot game introduced the fishing bonus – where you catch the fish and their money values with the fisherman – spawning huge swaths of similar fishing slots to meet demand.

Fishing’s success online aligns with the popularity of angling participation across the UK. Numbers have remained very high in recent years, and this goes for sea angling as well as in freshwater bodies. In fact, the reported 2023 figures for angling in England alone brought the count back up to above the previous recent high of 107,600 in 2017, hitting 108,500. Once the weather’s right for it, there’ll be no shortage of good places to fish in the UK, and Weybridge, as you’ll see, is no exception.

Weybridge is a great place to enjoy a spot of angling in the Spring and Summer. Fed by the River Thames and the River Wey, the waterways are teeming with fish to catch. Near Weybridge and across Surrey more generally, you can hope to catch trout, spined stickleback, grayling, spined loach, and the non-native, invasive zander. But if you prefer some place more intimate, you might try your hand at canal fishing down on the Wey Navigation.

The obvious choice for most, though, is the River Wey. Fishing here does require you to stick to some strict bye-laws issued by the GAS, and you’ll need to obtain a season ticket to get started. That said, you can also get day tickets nearby. A little further afield in the county, Lightwater Country Park is a favourite for locals. Day tickets are relatively cheap, too, at £9.90 for two rods. Then, there’s Bury Hill, whose three famed lakes house carp weighing in at over 40 lbs.

As the warm weather approaches, people across Weybridge will be able to trade in their in-house fishing experiences on screens for the real thing across the county.