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Ross on Wye Angling Club is a well established angling Club founded in 1912. The Club is run by a committee on behalf of the membership.

We offer 5.5 miles of superb fishing on the River Wye in rural Herefordshire.

We cater for keen coarse anglers, offering excellent fishing for specimen barbel, chub and pike along with perch, roach, dace and some grayling.

We offer salmon fishing with some historic named pools and a variety of waters suitable for both spinning and fly fishing.

You will be fishing in wonderful scenery on an SSSI river.

We keep our Membership rates as low as possible and are a not for profit Club.

The Ross on Wye Angling Club was founded in 1912 but the early days of the Club are at best a bit sketchy. With a little bit of research it can be determined that it is not until 1924 that anything of an organised nature comes along, though further digging may prove otherwise.

Through the 1920s and 1930s the waters available to members was by approach to individual landowners and the Club had a continual task in persuading the owners that the Club Members should be allowed to access the fishing. The Landowners were also made Vice Presidents of the Club for the duration that Club was permitted access their waters to fish. One such Vice President was Robert Pashley an Alderman of Ross and an expert salmon fisher who had 10,000 salmon to his rod during his lifetime. He lived at Kerne Bridge.

By the 1930s the were approximately 100 members most of whom came from Ross with a sprinkling of members from Birmingham who came down to fish by train. The membership rate in the 1930s and 40s was 2/6 (pronounced 2 and 6) which is twelve and a half pence in modern coin.

During the Second World War 1939-1945 the Club was put on a War Footing and all  normal Committee activity stopped and the Club was run throughout this period by the Committee elected in 1939. The Club also bought what were known as War Bonds which were intended as a loan to the Government of the time for the period of the War. They were paid back by the Government after the War with interest.

Through the 1940s,1950s and 1960s there were many Roving Pike matches which seem to be well supported by the membership of the time. These are thought to have been one means by which the number of pike were controlled in the Wye which at the time was a major salmon river and of course the pike were a threat to salmon in its various life stages. The weigh-in for the matches was always the Ross AC Club HQ so those pike didn’t go back!

Talking of which there have been at least two early Club Headquarters the first appears to have been the Railway Inn which stood in Brookend St Ross. The Lamb Inn part of Wintle’s Brewery in Broad St. Both these pubs are long gone.

Ross on Wye also had two affiliate clubs in the early days one being the Cheltenham Angling Club and they other the Gloucester Angling Club.

It was only in the 1970s that Ross AC had it own salmon fishing for the first time up until then the waters were shared with the salmon fishers of separate clubs/syndicates and it inevitably there was occasional friction.

Barbel are not native to the River Wye. In 1967 the Angling Times along with the River Authorities of the time thought that it would be a good idea to stock the Wye and the Severn with barbel. Even as late as 1989 there were so few barbel in the Wye as not to be worth fishing for!

TH 2021