Two elver fishermen from Bridgwater have been fined and ordered to pay costs of £1,790 after being caught using illegal nets and trespassing on land to catch eels.
Both cases were brought by the Environment Agency.
· Kevin Hill, from 51 Windsor Road, Bridgwater, was fined £310 and ordered to pay £500 costs.
· Mark Smith, of The Green, Bridgwater, was fined £480 and ordered to pay £500 costs and had his net confiscated by the court.
Fisheries bailiffs were on patrol and spotted Kevin Hill at 3.30am after he scaled a security fence at Dunball Sluice and began illegally fishing for elvers.
Environment Agency officers saw Mark Smith at 2am in the morning fishing at Hinkley Point with an oversized net within ten metres of an obstruction that hindered the passage of the eels and slowed them down. This made them easier to catch.
When examined the net was found to be illegal in ways that contravened the elver fishing byelaws.
‘The use of over-sized nets gives fishermen an unfair advantage over their law-abiding colleagues and enables them to catch additional elvers thereby reducing the number of young eels escaping upstream,’ said Richard Dearnley for the Environment Agency.
‘Smith was fishing near an obstruction which he knew would slow the eels down and make them easier to net, while Hill illegally entered a locked compound to fish at Dunball sluice after being warned on separate occasions not to do so.’
As the government body responsible for enforcing and regulating fisheries, the Environment Agency regularly inspects sites where elver fishing takes place. It is also responsible for issuing licences which cost £65 per year.
Around 200 fishermen are licensed to catch elvers in Somerset after the baby eels have journeyed from the Sargasso Sea off the Gulf of Mexico and made their way up the River Parrett.
Appearing before Bridgwater magistrates, Hill admitted two offences of trespass and illegally fishing for elvers in contravention of the National Eel Fishery Byelaws and the Land Drainage Act of 1991. Smith pleaded guilty to three offences of using a prohibited instrument in contravention of the National Eel Fishery Byelaws 2004 and the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act of 1975.
