An Alternative to Bag Limits?

[Ken Davison South Wales]

As you know this has been a pet hate of mine, I think one thing Wurzle and other licensed fishermen miss is the amount of black market bass hitting the market. This is one area where commercials and RSAs should have common ground.

 

The vast majority of these fish are taken by nets so if all nets had to have a license of £1000 per year which genuine commercials could set against their taxes the part timers would soon drop of the market.

 

Couple that with a reasonable bag limit for RSAs which would cover all rod caught fish, with say a £1000 fine for breaking the law and I am sure that side of things would be well covered.

 

Then the tagging system stating wild bass would work as these fish would command a premium market price. This coupled with a £5000 fine for retailers selling untagged fish would stitch up the loose ends.

 

As for inspection my neighbour fishes regularly on the west coast of Wales where he has a caravan and this year he has been stopped several times for a mls check so there is no reason why bag limits cannot be enforced.

 

Yes it is a lot of hassle to setup but the end result would be a higher price for bass on the quay and as Leon said a hundred tags in big fish is better than a hundred in small fish so this would go a long way towards improving stock size.

[Leon Roskilly]

The fact is that, for species where their is no quota, black fish landings are not a problem for RSA.

 

Whether the market is being supplied legally or illegally makes no difference to the amount of non-quota fish that the market is taking.

 

It merely means that bona fide licensed fishermen have a greater problem selling into an already well supplied market, and get a lower price for their product.

 

Carwyn Jones seems to think that if the black market for bass is stopped that those fish will not then be taken out of the sea, so regards it as a conservation measure.

 

However the market will still be there.

 

By choking off the black market supply it will merely mean that it will be bona fide licensed fishermen supplying that market with those fish rather than unlicensed commercial fishermen (rod and liners as well as netters).

 

So it's really about protecting the market and market price of licensed fishermen, rather than about conservation.

 

And anglers will not benefit from that.

 

Yet in order to protect that market, the intention is to take away the rights of bona fide Recreational Sea Anglers, because the perception is that will make supply to the black market more easy to enforce.

 

If a cap was to be placed on the effort on bass then perhaps a cap on the Recreational catch would be acceptable.

 

But the current bag limit proposals make no mention of a limit on total effort, licensed fishermen will still be able to put out as much netting as they possibly can, leave it in the water for as long as is practical, fish for as many hours as they can manage.

 

And when the black market is quashed, and the price of fish goes up, there is no way that the supply of fish will fall, rather the licensed catching sector will gear up to take up the slack.

 

And that is why the carcass tagging idea is preferable.

 

It not only makes life difficult for those who supply black fish, but it enables a cap to be placed on total effort, increasing the market price and meaning that bona fide licensed fishermen will actually be able to fish less for the same level of income.

 

Not only protecting the market and price of bona fide licensed fishermen, but delivering conservation benefits as well.

 

And there is no need to place unnecesary restrictions on bone fida Recreational Sea Anglers taking home fish for their own use, and to feed their families, though with a cap on commercial effort perhaps an angling bag limit would be more acceptable and equitable .

 

Win Win Win for everyone, and most importantly for the fish stocks themselves.

Edited November 17, 2006 by Leon Roskilly

[wurzel]

As you know this has been a pet hate of mine, I think one thing Wurzle and other licensed fishermen miss is the amount of black market bass hitting the market. This is one area where commercials and RSAs should have common ground.

 

The vast majority of these fish are taken by nets so if all nets had to have a license of £1000 per year which genuine commercials could set against their taxes the part timers would soon drop of the market.

 

Couple that with a reasonable bag limit for RSAs which would cover all rod caught fish, with say a £1000 fine for breaking the law and I am sure that side of things would be well covered.

 

Then the tagging system stating wild bass would work as these fish would command a premium market price. This coupled with a £5000 fine for retailers selling untagged fish would stitch up the loose ends.

 

As for inspection my neighbour fishes regularly on the west coast of Wales where he has a caravan and this year he has been stopped several times for a mls check so there is no reason why bag limits cannot be enforced.

 

Yes it is a lot of hassle to setup but the end result would be a higher price for bass on the quay and as Leon said a hundred tags in big fish is better than a hundred in small fish so this would go a long way towards

improving stock size.

 

Hello Ken And Leon

 

I think this is tit for tat getting out of hand, it is getting blown out of proportion and stoked up by commercial and RSA reps and welcomed by the need to manage brigade, I have not experienced any major problems with black fish, prices are already showing signs of being to high, there are to many alternatives including farmed bass, so prices will not go up if these things are in place.

It is exactly the same for the other thread on Cod bag limits, it's the commercial lobby fighting back, I can't blame them for that.

[stavey]

It will never happen mate as everyone is entitled to get a living from the sea.The only way is to licence everyone and ALL boats and have a cut off period.You will then have the cycle start again where licences change hands for vast sums so really you achieve nothing.I used to be commercial,Iceland,Barrents Sea and owned my own boats inshore and have always been an angler so I see the arguing from both sides but I can only see this going one way and that is with all the pushing and arguing it will be anglers that will lose and I see some sort of ban or at least a very restricted form of angling in the future.Councils now are starting to ban anglers from piers and harbours up and down the country and are now looking at a ban on beaches from April until November due to them being terrified of the public claiming against them in the event of an injury caused by anglers,this infact suits the powers that be because it takes a few anglers out of the equasion.Angling is in a period of change and we need to change with it and stop all the bickering or IMHO Im afraid we will lose it for good.

 

Hello ron,

Why did you give up commercial fishing!! if you dont mind me asking?

[barry luxton]

The tags are numbered and registered to a particular fishermen who keeps records of when the tag was used and who the fish was sold to.

 

If a restuarant is found to have tagged fish, or anyone is found in possession of tags that are not tracebale back to the fisherman that they were issued to, then they would have better to be found in possession of untagged fish.

 

 

Leon, this is a very heavy discussion, the question i ask is what this ultimatly has to do with the rsa angler in the first place, of all the years i have been fishing i have never come across rsa's selling their catch, i find this difficult to comprehend that the rsa is lumped in with the lower end of the commercial market and all that it entails. So rsa's do not even have to consider the tagging of fish unless they choose to move towards the commercial market. I would like to see hard evidence of rsa's selling before the possible restrictions that are being banded around.

[Leon Roskilly]

Leon, this is a very heavy discussion, the question i ask is what this ultimatly has to do with the rsa angler in the first place, of all the years i have been fishing i have never come across rsa's selling their catch, i find this difficult to comprehend that the rsa is lumped in with the lower end of the commercial market and all that it entails. So rsa's do not even have to consider the tagging of fish unless they choose to move towards the commercial market. I would like to see hard evidence of rsa's selling before the possible restrictions that are being banded around.

 

 

So would I Barry.

 

But in some places rod and line fishermen do take fish to sell (Torness, Admiralty Pier, quite a few from private or charter boats apparently)

 

The fact is that, if bag limits are introduced, anyone taking more than (say) two bass, and who isn't a licensed fisherman, will be committing an offence.

 

Nice and easy to enforce.

 

At the moment anyone taking away a sackful can legally sell them if caught off the beach, or if from a boat can claim they are for personal use.

 

It's very hard for a fishery officer to follow a suspect, observe a sale, and prove that the fish being sold were the ones taken by an unlicensed rod and line fisherman from a charter boat.

 

Stopping anyone from catching and retaining more than a bag limit is much easier to enforce.

 

We don't have to agree to it, anymore than we had to agree to the London Congestion charge, they just go ahead and impose it on their own terms if they feel that they can get away with it politically.

 

Under the system of carcass tags, you would only need tags if you intended to sell the fish, so anglers needn't be affected.

 

But if the carcass tagging system was also used to limit total commercial catch on conservation grounds, it would probably be acceptable that anglers also keep to reasonable bag limits.

[Steve Coppolo]

This whole thing about black fish and bag limits is becoming a joke. As Wurzel said, it's just tit for tat. The commercials want to put anglers on the back foot to slow down their progress with certain conservation measures that they've campaigned for. What better way to get someone on the back foot than forcing them to defend what they already have? That alone ties up RSA very nicely thank you.

 

The black fish is just a nonsense of an excuse for proposing bag limits for anglers. After all, they couldn't just say they want bag limits for anglers because they don't like them, or they want to get their own back! DEFRA are only too happy to go along with this because it takes the heat off of them. Lets face it, if black fish landings are such a big problem, that's got to be an enforcement problem hasn't it?

 

We are being played like a violin. The commercials are tying us up by threatening our existing rights, and at the same time diverting attention away from the real issues. At the same time DEFRA are are getting ready to penalise anglers for their own failures, ie, failure to manage the fishery and failure to enforce their own rules.

[frankthebass]

I think that most are missing the point, there is no way that a guy in a rowing boat and say 500 yards of gill net, or a guy in waders with say 200 yards of gill net would have such a impact as the commercial fleet with their high tech equipment.

 

If the commercials had not reeped the seas the above methods would be very substainable ways of fishing.

 

But we dont live in an ideal world, we live in a world of cloak and dagger and lots of gread.

 

I think that most are missing the point, there is no way that a guy in a rowing boat and say 500 yards of gill net, or a guy in waders with say 200 yards of gill net would have such a impact as the commercial fleet with their high tech equipment.

 

If the commercials had not reeped the seas the above methods would be very substainable ways of fishing.

 

But we dont live in an ideal world, we live in a world of cloak and dagger and lots of gread.

[Jim Roper]

The vast majority of these fish are taken by nets so if all nets had to have a license of £1000 per year which genuine commercials could set against their taxes the part timers would soon drop of the market.

 

Pay £1000 for a license and save £220 tax!

I think people can do sums nowadays!

 

 

Does anybody think that the majority of anglers would welcome Angling licenses, bag limits and being told they can't fish in certain areas?

[frankthebass]

A lisence would meen sea anglers would be paying to fish. So far to fish the sea is free and thought by most of us as a basic right. Now in many parts of England theres little to offer sea anglers in the way of decent sized fish, so what would anglers be paying for? If a lisence was put on us now all we would get for our mony would be the basic right to fish.

 

I feel we need a bit more, Im not sugesting the seas should be teaming with fish before we pay a lisence. What I am surgesting is that we at least need some firm promises on paper from our govenment that the nessersery restrictions would be placed on commercial effort to allow stocks to replenish.

NTZ,s lisences and bag limits are restrictions on anglers I feel most would except if applied with reason. If anglers could sea commercial effort was also being restricted in the right ways they maybe wouldnt feel so bitter about any restriction placed on them.

It wouldnt take many years before anglers could feel the benifits to the fisheries, this would then make their lisence worth the money they paid for it.

But it may take a big leap of faith on the behalf of anglers, a kind of chicken and egg situation seems to have developed around ristrictions to angling and the thought of a sea angling lisence.

Edited November 19, 2006 by frankthebass