Feargal Sharkey stares at the delicate tuft of feathers he is moulding on to a hook. The June rain pouring into the grounds of the private Hertfordshire fishery does not distract the former Undertones frontman. “This is called a grey wolf,” he explains, describing the finished fly. “It's a good one.”

How committed is the singer of Teenage Kicks to fly fishing? Mr Sharkey spends whole evenings making his own flies - concoctions of wax, fur and feathers which, if constructed correctly, resemble a wild trout's favourite meal. “A few times my wife has got annoyed when she opens the fridge to find a half-plucked chicken in it,” he admits.

“But fly fishing is a challenge and with that comes relaxation. I'm very happy spending two hours trying to nail that one difficult customer.”

When Mr Sharkey is not out on the river he heads UK Music, the collective body set up last year to defend the rights of the country's commercial music industry. Persuading internet service providers (ISPs) of their responsibility to come down hard on music piracy has proved as difficult as catching the most pernicious trout.

Only 12 months ago, the relationship between the record labels and the ISPs was “all out war”, Mr Sharkey says. The ISPs were adamant that they had nothing to do with illegal content and were just “conduits”.

“It was accusation and acrimony. No one stood up to solve the problem of piracy,” he says.

You can see how the avuncular and savvy musician brought the two warring sides together, as well as developing a close relationship with Andy Burnham, who was Culture Secretary at the time. His passion for music is obvious, after all he has spent all his adult life in the profession, first as a singer, then as an A&R man for a music label, then as chief executive of British Music Rights, before being appointed head of UK Music last October.

“The one thing every ISP customer has is a huge passion for music,” he says. “We're a colossal opportunity for them. As in any new partnership there's still an element of distrust but time will take care of that.” Over the next weeks, he says with a smile, there will be some “incredibly exciting announcements” coming from individual ISPs and record labels.

The details are unclear, but will involve bundling music subscriptions into the cost of broadband. Soon customers could get unlimited music by paying slightly more to their ISP than for a normal internet connection. Once that happens, Mr Sharkey hopes that the need for illegal downloading will disappear. “Research shows that 80 per cent of 14 to 24-year-old UK filesharers would pay for a legal service,” he says. “Quite clearly, this is the direction we need to be heading.”

Music piracy represents a “mortal threat” to the industry, he says. It estimated that the sector lost £180 million to online piracy in 2008 alone. “The next 12 months is going to be a crucial time in determining whether we have much of a music industry left in five years' time,” Mr Sharkey says. “That's where we are. Quite clearly we need something to be done very quickly otherwise we might not have much of an industry left.”

He favours a three-pronged attack. A new range of music services offered by ISPs and others will, he hopes, persuade many illegal downloaders to become legitimate. There are already more than 50 licensed music services in the UK which have emerged in the past 18 months. Some, like Spotify, have been embraced by millions of users.

This coupled with an educational campaign, like Respect the Value of Music, the British Music Rights' series, which aims to teach young people about copyright and, most controversially, an arrangement with the ISPs to write warning letters to those suspected of piracy.

Mr Sharkey doesn't want to pre-empt Digital Britain, the Government report that is due to be published on Tuesday, which deals with online piracy, but he disagrees with the recommendation made in the initial report that the industry should be able to sue persistent offenders.

“We have made it clear that we have no ambition to relive the past,” he says, referring to the period from 2000 to 2003 where international music companies launched lawsuits against thousands of teenagers. “It's frustrating that people think all the music industry wants to do is disconnect people.” When he feels his industry is being attacked, his natural charm slips a little. “For God's sake, we should give the industry some credit,” he says in his quick Derry accent. “We are still at the vanguard of all this. We are probably going to get something wrong. That's why we need help and support.”

He has no doubt that the next six months will be crucial.

“If we don't have help from the Government and the ISPs the next few years could be desperately bleak,” he says. “We're playing with a very considerable number of British jobs. There are people at a very senior level who are deeply, deeply concerned. I had a conversation with one MD of a record company who has had to lay off 20 per cent of his staff in the past two years.”

What sort of help does he want, exactly? “What we want from Government will be explained fully in Digital Britain,” he says, evasively. Mr Sharkey is happiest when he can control situations, and that includes keeping quiet about his exact plans. But he says he expects five or six commercial agreements between ISPs and record labels to emerge “in the next few weeks”. He is also pushing for a panel of Government ministers and leading industry leaders to report directly to the Prime Minister on copyright issues. “It should go straight to the heart of Government,” he says.

Mr Sharkey is speaking on the day after James Purnell resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary and the Government is in turmoil. “Obviously we hope changes to the political environment won't affect our progress,” he says. “Talk to me in a month and we'll see.”

Back on the two-mile stretch of the River Lee, owned by the Amwell Magna Fishery, the ex-punk who is the voice of John Peel's favourite record (Teenage Kicks was played on Radio 1 just after Peel's death was announced) is patiently explaining how to cast a fly. “Don't bend your wrist,” he says, as I flick the line into a hedge. “The most difficult thing is getting the line out,” he says, encouragingly. “Then you have to identify a trout that's feeding naturally. Try and figure out what it's feeding on. They could latch on to a particular species of fly at a specific stage of its development.”

Something about fly fishing, maybe the absolute contrast between singing in front of thousands of people (although he hasn't done that “in anger” for decades) and pottering around on the river, attracts Mr Sharkey to the sport. He is proud of the club's tradition, and tells me that Izaak Walton, the 17th century author of The Compleat Angler, is believed to have fished on this stretch of river.

“He that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit,” Mr Walton wrote. “But he must bring patience and love and propensity to the art itself.” Mr Sharkey might agree that the same qualities are necessary to safeguard the future of the music industry.

Catch of the day

Feargal Sharkey's top five fishing spots

1. The Parsonage, River Test,

Stockbridge

2. Amwell Magna, Hertfordshire

3. Tuolumne River, California

4. Crolly River, Donegal

5. Big Spring Creek, Pennsylvania

And his top five fishing tunes

1. Jimmy Cliff, Many Rivers To Cross

2. Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica

3. Union Jack, Two Full Moons & A Trout

4. The Waterboys, Fisherman's Blues

5. The Congos, Fisherman

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