Back in 1994 Fish’O’Mania broke new ground as the first large-scale televised match and the contest is also looking to pave the way again in 2019.
At the forefront of this has been making the contest more accessible to more anglers and thus there has already been the addition of a guaranteed female in the final to help encourage all ages of women into the contest.
In addition to this the Angling Trust has also consulted with Activity Alliance in order to make the contest as accessible as possible, whilst maintaining the parity to all competitors. Assessments have been performed with a select set of geographically diverse fisheries in order to establish the following list of wheelchair accessible qualifiers.
Gold Valley Lakes Qualifier
Lindholme Lakes Qualifiers 1 + 2
The Oaks Fishery Qualifier
Partridge Lakes Qualifier 1 + 2
On the qualifiers there will be dedicated drawing procedures to ensure that an angler fishing from a wheelchair can access as many pegs as possible.
We see this as a big step forward and will look to rollout the scheme to other competitions which have similarly accessible venues. We also hope that this is something that our members support and utilise for 2019.
