The Royal Oak Angling and Preservation Society is one club setup with two functions; as a match fishing club and as a society dedicated to restoration, conservation and education. For more information on the Preservation Society, please click on the link below, otherwise keep reading to find out more about the Royal Oak Angling club and our history.

The Royal Oak Preservation Society

We are a small Angling club local to West London, the Brentford and Isleworth areas mainly; we are based in the Isleworth working men's club in St John's road. We are a match fishing club; occasionally we fish against other clubs, but we prefer to fish against each other for our extensive range of trophies.

Our matches are every two weeks from the beginning of March to our Christmas match in December (our Summer League), and from January until the end of March (our Winter League). We fish mainly commercial fisheries which hold Carp and Silverfish. Occasionally we have canal matches and rarely river matches which have shown a decline in recent years.

The Royal Oak Angling Club came into being when a few of us anglers split away from a club based in Barnes in 1995 and set up our own club. The club really got started in 1996 when our numbers started to grow. In the early days we would fish small and large rivers and canals and we still have a Thames trophy and a small river shield, but lately members are reluctant to spend time fishing rivers with such a poor catch rate. We now mainly fish commercial fisheries. The Royal Oak club has had its ups and downs but settled at around between 25 and 35 members.

We were based in the Royal Oak pub in Brentford until 2009 when the pub changed hands and rather than stay in the Royal Oak with its poor parking spaces we opted for the Isleworth working men's club, where we are today. You do not need to be a member of the CIU Isleworth working men's club to be a member of the Royal Oak although most of us are, opting to pay the membership fee for the facilities offered. Membership to the CIU has to be agreed by the Committee but is just a formality.

If you are interested in joining us, you can fill out a new member's application form from the Membership section or get in touch with us about coming out on a match or two as a guest through the Contact us page.

Our match secretary is Roger Thorpe who is responsible for match bookings. It is Roger that you need to contact if you want to fish as a guest or if you are a member and haven't been out for a while, as most venues have limited pegs allocated to us. You can also contact Roger if you wish to join the club or have any queries regarding membership or matches.

Bill Smith keeps tabs on the club expenditure and bank account and is responsible for membership and re-joining the club, and for sending out reminders before the new season. He is also responsible for compiling the newsletter and for any correspondence required. If you wish to join you will need to send him a completed application form along with two passport sized photos (see the Membership section for more details).

Once the match has been arranged any problems which arise with the pegging arrangement should be addressed to the Match Steward Tony Atkinson. He has the authority to sensibly find alternative pegs if a problem arises. Any issues regarding rule infringements can also be directed to Tony. Problems he can't sort out shall be put before the committee for discussion and voting.

The many generations of our club logo - representing over a decade of match fishing.

The Royal Oak Angling and Preservation Society (ROAPS) was formed out of a desire to promote Angling in the local community and to inform people of all ages of the importance of conservation of our natural environment. For many years Anglers have been the watch dog for the Environment Agency, reporting polluted waters and helping to save many thousands of fish and our water from its dire consequences. Our aims as a society include:

• To promote angling within the local community and elsewhere through education and coaching.
• To provide angling facilities for the disabled and the local community.
• To promote conservation of the natural environment through education and coaching.

We have in the last few years taken school kids from Isleworth and Syon on activities week and by travelling to various venues introducing them the different aspects of angling. We are not aiming to teach them to be top anglers but to show them the different ways of fishing and to practise enough discipline and patience to catch fish. Many of the children are disruptive but we hope that by showing them some of the skills we have accumulated over decades we can instil in them some of the fervour that we experience. Our aim is to have a base for our training sessions with a view to extending them across the whole year not just in activities week, in this way we should produce some quite capable anglers.

We believe that if we teach school children how to fish they will take it with them through life always having something to do to keep them from mischief. There are many aspects of our “aims” which may include pond dipping for 6-11 year olds, showing them the natural world that’s all around and how the survival of one creature has an impact on others. Discussing the need to provide natural habitats for wild life and birds such as siting nesting boxes and hedge rows for safe environments and informing children of the results this can have on the environment for example by an increase in bird populations, will be beneficial to younger generations in the future. The need for clean water and the effects on wild life of dirty, polluted or stagnant water could be explained and the effects that these have on the fish stocks and the invertebrates that they feed on, to give young people an idea of the effect we have on the environment around us.

We hope to have training sessions for adults who are retired or disabled or for people who just want to go out week ends and grab some fresh air while fishing and enjoying the surroundings. People have contacted us about training for adults and we hope to produce a suitable course in time and provide coaching, watch this space for future developments.