At least one keeper at Ware was so unreliable that simultaneously while giving evidence in a poaching prosecution he was selling fishing tickets privately to the general public and supplying local hostelries with out-of-season trout! Even this source of labour evaporated. The flood alleviation scheme of 1974 resulted in a fixed crest weir at the cottage and a weir keeper was no longer required. In anticipation, the weir keeper left in 1971 and the old cottage had had its last tenant after 132 years.

Other old traditions were also ending. In 1970, the Berkshire Trout Farm which had supplied the club with stock fish for fifty-one years was unable to offer any more brown trout because of the outbreak of the fungicidal fish disease called U.D.N. Then, a year later, Amwell Magna held its annual meeting at the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street for the last time. Members had met there for sixty-four years, It was a sensible and practical recognition that the power base of the club membership has shifted from London to the local area. Henceforth, the meetings were to be held at the Hertford Constitutional Club.

As early as 1945 meadow land known as Sheepcote Farm on the west side of the river had been sold for gravel winning, and operations began in the mid 1960s. The whole landscape was altered, and the peaceful meadows were replaced by lakes and the clamour of the insatiable gravel winning machinery. The feeder stream in which trout had bred was obliterated.

The shadow of a take-over by the Lea Valley National Park, the insecurity of a yearly lease and miserable catches from 1973 to 1975 brought the fishery to its nadir. The forty-six fish caught in 1975 was the lowest since 1947.

From that point the club’s fortunes changed. In return for relinquishing some of its fishing rights the club was granted extra rights on the River Ash and on the east bank of the Lea.

The work on the weirs was at last completed. Some 3000 coarse fish were cleared from the water by the Thames River Authority and a more generous stocking policy instituted of 700 trout a year. Catches began to exceed 200 a year, membership increased to the new limit of thirty-five and new, younger members made their present felt. Then the club’s secretary Gilbert Pusey was able to announce that a ten year lease had been signed with the Thames River Authority.

During the 1990s the club experienced something of a renaissance. Changing attitudes, a clearer understanding of the relationship between the quality of fishing, welfare of the trout and the health of the river.

One of our beatiful Brown Trout summer of 2000

May 2002 provided one of the best hatches of Mayfly for years (the fishery has both Ephemera Danica and Ephemera Vulgata). While apparently declining elsewhere, Blue Winged Olives are beginning to reappear. For the first time in almost four decades brown trout have been seen spawning. Stone Loach and Brook Lamprey have begun to repopulate the river and the shallows are alive with small fry. The first Grayling have been caught since the 1960s.

The landscape also has changed, gravel extraction has now finished. The grinding and clanking of heavy machinery has been replaced with birdsong and the sight of Sparrow Hawks. The area to the west of the fishery recently designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest provides a home to over wintering birds from warmer climates, even the occasional Bittern.

This short history was first written by "Kenneth Robson", and appeared in "Hertfordshire Countryside", magazine in 1982.