The charitable status recently achieved by the Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) will prevent that body engaging in the full merger being discussed by angling's multifarious - and, hitherto, often warring - representative bodies. The S&TA has, however, committed itself to the principle of unity and to working closely alongside any newly merged group.

The prospect of even a partial merger by these organisations, after so many previous failed attempts, has been going to some people's heads. In sections of the angling media, the possibility of a brighter and more co-ordinated future for the sport has given rise to something close to hysteria. And it has been catching.

Why, only a couple of nights ago, I even dreamt about a successful merger - and of how wonderful life might be after it has solved all our problems. I dreamt that one day I will be fishing in waters that are plentiful and clean. There will be no abstraction from their catchments. No insecticides will leach into the water from the farmland around them, no herbicides will kill off water plants, no fertilisers will promote choking growths of algae.

Cattle and sheep will not trample down the banks or churn up silt, so the gravels that many fish use for spawning will not become clogged up and lifeless. Pollution by water companies will not be condoned because it is cheaper for governments to ignore it than to frame laws against it and enforce them. There will be no industrial spillages and no accidental leaks.

No natural oestrogens will be allowed into the water, nor chemicals that mimic oestrogens, and so all male trout, roach, dace, chub and what have you will be whole and complete male trout, roach, dace, chub and what have you. They will not have been feminised or otherwise chemically tinkered with, as countless male fish are. The same will be true of aquatic flies and bugs, numbers of which are plummeting.

Eels will be abundant, the cause or causes of their decline long since recognised and addressed. Naturally, the same will be true of salmon. Young salmon will have benefited from the same healthy rivers as trout and all else. Smolts without number will run down to the seas. In the seas, they will find food aplenty because the seas, likewise, will be unsullied and, where appropriate, cool. Rising water temperatures will long have been reversed because nation will have spoken unto nation and the causes of climate change will have been addressed on the basis of goodwill and the common good, not to mention a need for the human race to survive.

When young salmon get where they need to go in the high Atlantic, they will find no nets awaiting them. They will flash and turn in the chainmail curtains of little fish that for millennia past nature had always provided there - and they will wax and grow fat. When the now great fish swim back to their rivers with eggs and milt inside them, there will again be no nets waiting.

All the obstacles to their upstream spawning runs will have been removed and all the humans they encounter, anglers not excluded, will show restraint in their exploitation of bounty. Each year, in the low, gold-leaf light of winter, a new generation of eggs will be left safe under the gravels where the bright waters burble. When these eggs hatch, fry will be present in such numbers that sawbill ducks will be able to make no inroads into them and of cormorants there will be not a sign.

Far away in a city somewhere, the leaders of the angling community will gather. The only smoke that will fill their meeting rooms will be the smoke of incense and, offstage, choirs of maidens will sing sweet and low. There will no longer be enmities or jealousies or conflicting ambitions between these leaders nor ancient grievances. Together, their sole concern will be common and noble: the maintenance of healthy waters everywhere and of rich, pyramidal populations in them of all the creatures that nature first intended.

Moreover, after these talks, any actions required of our leaders will be agreed on the basis of rational discussion. Where these actions - and concerns, if there are any, although there will be few - need to be announced to a world agog, they will be announced by a common voice that speaks clearly and intelligently for every man jack of us: for game anglers and coarse anglers and those who fish in the sea.

When this voice is lifted, it will be respected by all who hear it. The Government, when it hears it, will listen carefully because it will know that this is indeed a common voice, the common voice of millions of the sons of Izaak. Appropriate government action, supported by appropriate government funding, will swiftly result where required.

If there are any angling opponents, their views will be acknowledged with respect because they will contain none of the distortions that extremists propagate and anglers will, likewise, be heard. An appreciation of the natural world as it is, and not as some think it or would like it to be, will inform all debate.

Then, on that broad, green upland, the smell of incense will reach everywhere and the choirs of maidens will lift their voices and a bright light will shine from the heavens and bathe all in peace. And the whole world will be just dandy.

Those merger talks had sure better work out.

Brian Clarke's angling column appears on the first Monday of each month.

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