Police recover fishing tackle in raid on Canvey home (From Echo)

Police recover fishing tackle in raid on Canvey home

8:20am Monday 3rd September 2012 in Local News By Laura Smith

POLICE have recovered fishing equipment believed to have been stolen from anglers across Canvey .

Officers raided a home in Larup Avenue to seize the equipment, but found no-one at home.

The find comes after a spate of thefts of fishing equipment on the island, which has left anglers perplexed.

Police have had reports of 12 thefts or burglaries in Castle Point relating to fishing equipment since April.

Castle Point Inspector Chris Wood said they were now hoping to reunite victims with their stolen goods. He said: “We are trying to identify it and return it to the owners.

“It doesn’t appear from what we’ve found that the fishing equipment was being particularly targeted, it was just stolen because it was being stolen along with other property.

“A lot of people happen to have fishing equipment on Canvey because the lake is popular for fishermen.”

The raid happened on Tuesday afternoon and since then police have been chasing leads to try to find the person responsible.

Neil Bennett, 43, warehouse manager at Gone Fishing, in Shannon Way, Canvey, has heard from a string of customers who have had fishing tackle stolen.

He said: “We’ve had another couple of customers come in over the past week who’ve had theirs taken. But one of them was as far away as Grays, so there must be a few people involved in doing this.”

Mr Bennett has had about £1,200 of equipment stolen from the shed of his Canvey home, including Nash rods, reels and bite alarms.

The thieves only got away with half of his equipment the first time, so he moved the remainder in case they came back a second time. He added: “There’s a lot of people out there who have lost all of their stuff. I was lucky I locked the rest of it up and they only got half.

“I’m glad to hear about this raid. I would be really happy just to get some of my stuff back. There might be light at the end of the tunnel for someone who lost theirs.”

Insp Wood advised anglers to carefully secure their fishing equipment.

He said: “People don’t always secure it, they leave it in their shed and their shed unlocked, but it can be very valuable.

“People can sometimes spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds on it.”

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