The Fishery Plan

The Fishery is divided into four beats, each comprising a stretch of the main river and a stretch of a carrier stream.

THE BEATS

Timsbury and Fishery’s four individual private beats on the River Test provide over 3 miles of fishing, with two rods fishing on each beat. The beats are shown on the adjacent map

VIEW FISHERY

To view Timsbury fishery on Google Maps, click on the button below

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  • Map-Timsbury_WP-Beat-2
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  • Map-Timsbury_WP-Beat-4

It has been said that “there are four great rivers in the world,

the Amazon, the Ganges, the Nile and the Test, and some say that the greatest of these is the Test.”

Farmland & SSSI

Timsbury Fishery Limited owns the fishing rights at the fishery in the River Test and its carriers and has access rights along the banks. It also owns a small amount of land alongside the main carrier. The rest of the land within the fishery is privately owned and is currently farmed under the Environmentally Sensitive Area scheme.

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  • The angler forgets most of the fish he catches, but he does not forget the streams in which they are caught

  • There are two types of fishing; good fishing and great fishing. Great fishing is when you catch something

  • All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and in no way shared by the fish

  • Fishing is a discipline in the equality of men – for all men are equal before fish

  • Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend

  • I’ve gone fishing thousands of times in my life, and I have never once felt unlucky or poorly paid for those hours on the water

Weed Cutting

Weed cutting takes place during the fishing season on dates and at frequencies fixed by the Test and Itchen Association. The dates are notified in the annual information provided to members, both for the Test as a whole and for the Timsbury fishery.

Test & Itchen Association

The T&I is the body which regulates fishing and related matters on the two named rivers, under powers delegated from the Environment Agency. Every member of the Company owns indirectly an interest in the River Test and is entitled to be a member of the T&I. Membership is encouraged because it allows Timsbury’s interests to be well represented in the T&I’s considerations of the river’s overall management.

The fishery manager can provide details to Syndicate members of how to join the T&I. The T&I has two public meetings a year at which there are normally topical lectures on issues concerning the Test and Itchen. In recent years the fishery has timed its Syndicate AGM to be held on the same day as the T&I autumn meeting, enabling members to attend both.