About Get Hooked On Fishing

Our aim is to create opportunities for young people – building a brighter future for them, their families and local community. We seek to achieve this by delivering fun and interactive activities centred around the sport of angling.

Background

Get Hooked was set up in 2000 by Mick Watson, then a policeman in County Durham who used angling, his own passion, to engage local young people in a rewarding activity that would divert them from anti-social behaviour.

Durham Agency against Crime delivered the original scheme and its success in improving school attendance rates and involving participants in positive alternatives to criminal behaviour resulted in interest from politicians and local agencies across the country.

Get Hooked on Fishing

By 2004 there were a number of schemes running in England and Wales and Get Hooked on Fishing Charitable Trust was formed as an umbrella organisation to co-ordinate and support them, develop new initiatives and partnerships and assure quality and standards.

In February 2010 Get Hooked on Fishing, a charity and limited company, took over the unincorporated Charitable Trust, retaining the same objects.

“Most Youth Service professionals who have encountered the Get Hooked on Fishing scheme have sensed something special about the project. There is an apparent synergy of vision, commitment, process and tangible outcomes.”

Home Office Positive Futures

What do we do

Get Hooked provides an umbrella structure for the twenty or so Get Hooked on Fishing schemes that now run in England, Scotland and Wales. Some schemes are based on coarse fishing, some on sea angling and some on fly fishing.

The Trust works with partners such as the Environment Agency, the Angling Trust, the Angling Development Board, Positive Futures, charitable trusts, central and local government to promote the value of angling for young people who are troubled or who have special needs. It provides direction and guidance to local schemes, all of whom must sign up to the Get Hooked on Fishing Chartermark Standards.

Most importantly, we seek to engage with local communities, particularly those who have high level of economic or social deprivation, and seek to involve them in determining the particular nature of the activities undertaken.

More on Get Hooked on Fishing

Get Hooked on Fishing is a registered charity and has been in existence for approx 8 years. We work with all ages and abilities but our focus tends to be on working with children and young people. Read more here…

Monitoring & Evaluation

We are working in partnership with Substance Coop, a social research company, who have developed a web based ‘ground- breaking’ monitoring and participatory evaluation system, SPRS. The system allows us to record online participative, qualitative evidence of delivery and helps us to evaluate how our intervention helps to develop individuals.

Click here for more information