Fishing for stats

I'm a keen fisherman and love the sport for so many different reasons, but I must admit to cringing when people reel out these stats about it being the UK's most popular participation sport.

Really?

According to what?

Maybe the biggest participation sport amongst fish.

How do people get hold of these stats. Amongst my fishing fraternity I probably know ten people, compared with twenty people who play football.

And most of those twenty know only one person who fishes - me.

And how do they qualify the term 'participates' anyway?

Isn't going down the park with my 4-year-old and kicking a ball around (badly) participating?

And they still think more people fish?

I guess the real point of this is that I don't want fishing to become ultra-popular, attract new entrants into the sport, because it's perfect the way it is, thank you.

And besides, there will be less fish to catch!