Do I need a rod licence?

Yes. Anyone aged 13 or over fishing for coarse fish, trout, salmon or eels in England and Wales needs an Environment Agency rod licence, and it is separate from any ticket or membership the water itself needs. Buy it from the Post Office or on GOV.UK.

Is there free fishing?

We hold 4 waters reported as free to fish beyond a rod licence: Big Corner, Tank Traps, The Plough at Long Wittenham, and others. Free fishing is the hardest thing to be sure of, so each one says who reported it and when anybody last checked.

Free fishing in Oxfordshire

Free fishing is the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to get wrong. There is no register of it, the bank often changes hands halfway along a stretch, and the fact that nobody stopped you last time is not evidence. Every water below is reported as free by somebody, with the date that report was last checked — which is the most anybody can honestly tell you.

We hold four waters here: four river stretches.

By permission: four reported as free fishing. The four free waters are the hardest of these to establish and the most worth knowing.

All of these are reported to carry the river close season, 15 March to 15 June, and are reported closed for it.

We hold no species records for any of these yet.

These were last checked between 4 September 2026 and 14 October 2026.

Map

Every line below is a report with a date on it, not permission to fish. Read the disclaimer.

4 waters

These are reports, not permission. Verify locally before fishing. This site grants no permission to fish.

Questions people ask

Do I need a rod licence?: Yes. Anyone aged 13 or over fishing for coarse fish, trout, salmon or eels in England and Wales needs an Environment Agency rod licence, and it is separate from any ticket or membership the water itself needs. Buy it from the Post Office or on GOV.UK.
Is there free fishing?: We hold 4 waters reported as free to fish beyond a rod licence: Big Corner, Tank Traps, The Plough at Long Wittenham, and others. Free fishing is the hardest thing to be sure of, so each one says who reported it and when anybody last checked.

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Below 3 waters a page like this does not publish at all.