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Otters Force Out Fishing Club


Elton

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Ive yet to see one of these otter stories with out the words carp or barbel in it.

 

"He estimated that over £40,000 worth of fish, including carp, had been killed by otters since they arrived in the area, and added that the issue of sustainability of otters and fish needed to be explored."

 

Are otters the problem or is it that angling has turned into largely a carp, barbel and specimen fish sport?

 

A tiger does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep

 

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It's such a long time that I've contributed to this forum that I'm not sure I'm doing this right. If my post comes out as a series of strange symbols as if submitted by an alien, please forgive me.

 

If, however, you are reading this, then I've cracked the new technology yet again. Whoopee. When you get to read what I've got to say, however, you may feel that my views are somewhat alien to most anglers.

 

You see, I don't go along with the tendency in recent years to get hysterical about perceived threats to angling by natural predators like otters. I can understand the argument against cormorants, because their arrival at our fisheries is an unnatural situation, caused by the depletion of their natural food source elsewhere. But otters?

 

As a countryman all my life, I can tell you that otters were, within living memory, much more commonplace than they are today. The destruction of their environment by dredging and bankside clearance plus the possible side-effects of intensive agriculture after World War II saw their numbers crash catastrophically... to the point in the early 1970s when they were virtually extinct in lowland England.

 

I can well remember a local newspaper story (Lynn News & Advertiser, West Norfolk) in 1975 or 76, reporting that the local otterhounds on the River Wissey (a tributary of the lower Great Ouse) had been disbanded because there were no longer any otters for them to hunt.

 

I welcome the return of otters to the countryside, just as I welcome the return of birds of prey, which were also reduced to pitifully small numbers through toxic farming chemicals after WWII. These days I live in Northamptonshire, where red kites (once extinct) and buzzards (once very rare) are now plentiful. Watching them is a great source of pleasure when the pike are being unco-operative.

 

It was with great displeasure that I heard recently of red kites being shot and killed at a location a few miles away. Unfortunately, there still remains a diehard ignorant old breed of keepers and shooters who regard any predator as vermin -- and destroy it accordingly, regardless of the law.

 

So far, I have only seen two otters in the Nene valley, where I live. However, I can honestly say that those sightings gave me every bit as much pleasure as landing my one and only 20 lb-plus pike from the river... and rather more than the 20 lb-plus carp I used to catch from the Nene before unscrupulous, thieving scum caught and removed them to various stillwaters in the area.

 

I digress, but not a lot. You see, I have this rather old-fashioned notion of predatory mammals that eat fish to survive being perhaps a little more important than anglers worrying that their over-stocked lake is being naturally reduced to an acceptable stock level.

 

If your lake is over-stocked with fish, then it will attract predators. That is called nature trying to address an imbalance. If you don't like it, invest in anti-otter fencing. If not, relish the challenge of catching of fooling a wily fish in a lake with a natural stocking density.

 

The hysterical stuff we're hearingf rom some quarters is, frankly, laughable. Claims that lakes or rivers have been "emptied" by a marauding otter is simply ridiculous. Even if it was true that a family of otters had move din, it would soon move on once stocks were depleted and therefore became harder to catch.

 

Also, how many fish do you think an otter eats? The otter is a small mammal, about the size of my pet dog (a miniature schnauzer, Herbie. Now Herbie is a greedy little bugger, but let me assure you that he couldn't get through 1 lb of food a day.

 

So, a couple of otters move onto your lake... and eat an average of a couple of pounds of fish a day. That would be a lot less than the lake's perch or pike population.

 

And that's if they arrive in the first place. Anglers everywhere are getting all worked up on this otter thing, but I'd wager that the vast majority of anglers in England have never seen an otter in the wild.

 

The "problem" is not that otters eat fish, of course, but that they sometimes, apparently, attempt to eat big fish. Fish with names.

 

And big fish with names are worth money. That's what all this is really all about.

 

The truth is that the general public -- that's the vast majority of the people in this country, not a handful of selfish and blinkered specimen hunters or profiteering fishery owners -- love the idea of otters being reintroduced to the wild. They like the idea of our rural environment being restored so that future generations can enjoy the wildlife that their parents and grandparents knew.

 

It is their ideal that will prevail. And anglers kicking up a stink and demanding licences to cull etc will put the sport in a very poor light, which is the last thing we need. We'll be seen in the same light as the dinosaurs in the hunting and shooting fraternity.

 

PS: I had to laugh at the latest Angling Times, where perceived threats to angling from predators included BEAVERS. Perhaps somebody should tell them that beavers are vegetarians. They eat bark.

Fenboy

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Fenboy. Great points made. I would go one step further and encourage the reintroduction of otters to realise the natural balance which should be present in our waters. The only problem we have here is a few angling clubs determination to manicure river banks to make their waters easier to fish. I have absolutely no problem with some pegs designed for disabled access but we need to be very careful.

BTW do otters feed on signal Crayfish????

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Welcome back Fenboy - and thanks for typing out everything I was thinking :thumbs:

 

(PS I grew up not a million miles from the Wissey and used to fish it a lot. I saw my first wild otter there in the mid-1990s - a very special moment indeed.)

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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Many thanks for the kind words. It's gratifying to know there are like-minded people out there who can see the whole picture.

 

Oh yes... and it's good to be back.

Fenboy

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Many thanks for the kind words. It's gratifying to know there are like-minded people out there who can see the whole picture.

 

Oh yes... and it's good to be back.

 

Welcome back fenboy, and I'll add my thanks for expressing many of my thoughts in your post.

 

The sad thing is that on here you are mainly speaking to the converted, (there are few exceptions). I've found to my cost that many other forums don't share our views, and see any predator as a 'problem that needs solving'.

 

John.

Angling is more than just catching fish, if it wasn't it would just be called 'catching'......... John

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