The United States lost fishing participants last year for the first time in four years, and the industry body that counts them says the churn behind that number is the worst on record.
The 2026 Special Report on Fishing, published by the American Sportfishing Association on 29 July, put 2025 participation at 57 million Americans aged six and over - about 18 percent of the country. The 2024 figure was 57.9 million, an all-time high. Measured against 2015, participation is still up by close to a quarter.
What alarmed ASA was not the 900,000 shortfall but the traffic behind it: 19 million people who fished in 2024 skipped 2025 entirely.
"In 2025, fishing continued to bring Americans together, connecting people to the outdoors, sustaining families and strengthening the communities and economies that depend on it," said ASA President and CEO Glenn Hughes. "While trendline data still shows growth in the past decade, keeping anglers engaged in fishing continues to be a struggle, with 19 million people dropping from the sport in 2025 - the highest rate of 'churn' on record."
Plenty in the report points upward. Anglers who stayed put in more days on the water, pushing total outings up 3 percent to 918 million. Saltwater fishing set a fourth straight record at 15.5 million. Three million people fished for the first time, lifting newcomers to 11 percent of all participants from 9 percent. Black participation reached nearly 6 million, the highest since counting began in 2007; Hispanic anglers hit 6.9 million, twice the 2015 total.
Part of the explanation lies in Washington rather than on any river. Federal money for the National Outreach and Communications Program, authorised under the Dingell-Johnson Act to fund beginner programmes and recruitment work, stopped flowing in early 2025.
Bassmaster's Joe Sills documented the sequence in February. The Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, the nonprofit that had delivered the programme for 27 years and built the Take Me Fishing campaign, saw its funding frozen on 1 April 2025 and halved a staff of 16. On 10 June it received notice that its work "no longer effectuates the priorities of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service", killing its grants for 2025 through 2027. Interior subsequently advertised about $26 million, drawing more than 200 applicants.
JD Strong had left retirement to join RBFF as senior director of industry engagement. He cleared his desk in Alexandria that August.
"There was a time when all of this money was going out the door to multiple entities and we were getting a downward spiral in participation," Strong told Bassmaster. "Are we headed back in that direction now?"
Hughes did not hide his view of the decision. "I thought there was no better way of using funds than through RBFF," he said. "For 27 years, no other group has had the infrastructure, the wherewithal, the intelligence and the relationships to pull a national program off."
Rachel Piacenza, the foundation's senior director of consumer marketing, put the case for what was lost. "Few were doing what RBFF did on a national scale," she said. "That is making real space for newcomers while motivating the entire industry to evolve, be more welcoming and stay relevant."
RBFF later reported that licence sales in states reporting to a national dashboard dropped 8 percent between 1 April and mid-July 2025 - a swing it valued at more than $590 million in angler spending and 5,600 jobs.
There is a competing reading. Russ Mason, once wildlife chief at Michigan's Department of Natural Resources, told Interlochen Public Radio in February 2025 that no marketing budget reverses the underlying demographics.
"If you look across North America, 15% of people fish, about 4.5% of people hunt," Mason said. "And those numbers are expected to decline, so there will be fewer anglers in the future, fewer hunters in the future, and there's really not much that can be done about that."
Mason wants the funding base widened rather than the same anglers squeezed again, calling the licence-fee reflex "a tired and threadbare approach to funding fish and wildlife conservation" and pointing to Missouri and Minnesota, where dedicated sales tax revenue spreads the cost across everyone who uses the outdoors.
The report leaves both camps room. Eighty-six percent of today's anglers were fishing before they turned 12. One in ten non-anglers, and 15 percent of children, said they had considered going. And 99 percent of 2025 participants expect to fish in 2026 - an intention the churn figures suggest many will not act on.
"Bringing new folks into our community and slowing the churn rate are top priorities for ASA and the entire sportfishing industry," Hughes said. "Decreased participation doesn't just result in lower tackle sales, it also leads to reduced public access, fewer fish stocked in lakes and rivers, less habitat improvement projects and so much more."
