The Royal Forest of Dean Angling Club celebrate their 60th anniversary this year and while they have plenty to look back on with obvious pride, it’s the future that the club are focusing all their efforts on.

Specifically, it’s the children of today, and the club, which boast 300 members, are actively involved in trying to get more youngsters hooked on a sport that remains very popular around Gloucestershire and beyond.

“We are involved in the charity Fishing 4 Kids which aims to get kids back on the banks,” said one-time professional angler Adrian Lane.

“We’ll supply the lessons and expertise, we just need the kids to get off their Xbox and to look inside a tackle box.”

Adrian has got a nice turn of phrase and he is one of the driving forces behind the campaign.

“The club want to have enough youngsters to form a team and compete in friendlies and match fishing,” explained Adrian, who said the campaign to attract more juniors into the sport will start at the beginning of the school summer holidays. “Some of our adult members are training to be coaches.”

And if and when the youngsters around the Forest do catch the angling bug, there’s certainly plenty of places for them to take their rods, because the Royal Forest of Dean Angling Club fish at Lightmoor Pool, Meadowcliffe, Plump Hill Pool, Steam Mills Lakes, Waterloo Screens and on the River Wye.

“Some of the places we fish are big lakes,” said Adrian, “they’re not small puddles of water. Steam Mills is the biggest, that’s five acres of water and up to 50ft deep.”

So what’s in the lake?

“A lot of carp,” said Adrian. “We put new carp in there in October.”

And it’s not just carp.

“There’s roach, bream, eels, rudd, perch and tench, virtually everything,” added Adrian.

The club are part of the Angling Trust, an organisation which are actively promoting the sport to the younger generation.

Lane is an area controller for the Trust and is part of the voluntary bailiffs service in Gloucestershire. It’s an important role, too.

“I go round with the Environment Agency and the police, checking rod licences and club permits,” Adrian explained. “I also look for criminal activity and fish theft around the fisheries.”

And if you think angling is a big part of Adrian’s life, you’d be right, but he actually gave up the sport for 20 years, even though it was something he was clearly very good at back in the day.

“I did alright,” the 54-year-old said modestly. “I used to fish along the Gloucester Canal. There was some big prize money to be won. If you won a couple of thousand pounds that was a lot of money back then.

“There’d also be a bookie on the bank and you could have a bet on yourself to win!

“These days it’s all about getting the biggest fish but in those days it was the overall weight that mattered most.”

Painswick-born Adrian was encouraged to fish by his dad, Edward, and from the age of 10 it became his passion. If you didn’t know where he was, it was a fair bet that he would be down at the Stroud Water Canal.

Now Adrian’s 12-year-old son Aiden has taken up fishing and that’s what got dad back involved in the sport.

“I was a professional angler for 10 years and then a lorry driver for 20 years,” said Adrian. “Then Aiden started fishing with his school. He kept pestering me to get some tackle.

“I kept resisting because it had taken over my life once before, but then I said ‘yes’ and that was it. I’d had a lot of joy from fishing so I thought, ‘Let’s put something back into the sport with the Angling Trust’.”

And you get the impression that he is delighted to be back, even though these days he describes himself as a “pleasure angler”.

So how good is Aiden?

“He’s a very good little angler,” said his proud dad. “He does the most unexpected things but he does pull it off.”

And how does he compare with dad?

“He has been known to beat me,” laughed Adrian.

Father and son obviously enjoy it, so what’s so special about the sport?

“You learn to respect the countryside,” said Adrian. “It teaches you to relax and just appreciate nature.”

And through Fishing 4 Kids, Adrian hopes many more youngsters will take up a sport that has given him and his family so much pleasure over the years.

For more information, visit www.fishing4kids.org.uk, www.rfodac.org.uk or www.adrianlane.co.uk.