thedogs

From what I have seen from the ruddy NFSA, SACN and to a certain extent from BASS, sense aint to common!

same ol same ol!

My only reason for this post was to offer hope to the uneducated conservation minded sea anglers that are ****ed off that the campaign aint going anywhere. Even without any help from RSA lobbyists, DEFRA or any other body inshore commercial effort on the river Blackwater has been cut! Some boats are still working the maplins and just out side the river blackwater but basically all commercial effort ftom sails point right the way up river has been cut! __________________

I would agree that this weed does push fish around the estuary. It seems to be through out thge water colum. Although indevidual bits of weed are very small collectivly its a pain in the are for both anglers and gill netters. I dont think fish enjoy this weed as I would think it gets caught in their gills or at least a nusense to them.

But its the fish which are the important thing. And due to this there is less effort on fish. So although frustrating to both rsa and commercial gill netters at the end of the day it still remain an cap on effort.

For years now sea anglers have been lobbying government to cap commercial effort. We seem at times to be bombarded with pages of information about conservation this conservation that, and about responding to various consultations. Despite some very hard lobbying, those who represent sea anglers haven’t really achieved much. However inshore commercial effort one of my local estuaries the Backwater has been dramatically cut this season and this cap happens year after year and seems to be increasing in length each year. The cut in inshore commercial pressure is caused by a type of green fluffy weed, often refereed to as May weed. Anglers will know the stuff, it’s the stuff that clings to your line and gathers around your leader knot. This weed is the kiss of death to a gill-netter, it clings to the mono meshes just as it does an anglers line. It renders a gill net useless, so the commercials either move offshore to try and avoid the weed. But most inshore boats are to small to get out past this problem and hang their nets up until mid to late October when the weed thins out. The weed now starts much earlier and finishes later and this length of time seems to increase each year. Its speculated that climate change, coupled with nitrates from field are causing this. The only down side that I can see is that no RSA representatives have had their egos massaged. There are many ways that nature caps inshore commercial effort, the phospherosense makes the dawn or evening shot nets glow bright green so gill nets wont work. Weather to stops some effort. Group all these natural things together and it aint easy being an inshore gill netter in the 21st centry.

At the end of the day you only get out what you put in, and most sea anglers find this stuff boreing or/and dont understand it!

Not saying I would be at all happy paying a licence yet, however I do think the nickings of commercial fishermen who fish over quota and sell black fish is a start. The fishery hear in the Thames estuary is becoming more and more healthy each year. I hope that elerments of the marine bill will help it stay that way!

The responses to the rsa stratergy have helped postpone a rsa licence. But I do think we will see one sooner or later. If this happens and I feel our government are carring out better, sensible marine managment then I would not object, but I aint holding my breathe!

A lot of the inshore effort has been cut on the Blackwater due to the amount of weed. Some fishermen are blaming the farmers. The thought behind this is that the water coming down river contains nitrates that have washed from the farmers fields. This coupled with relativly shallow water and a longer season means the weed builds to a level that stops the use of gill nets by mid to late July. Now I for one wont be thanking the farmers, even if indirectly thay have contributed to the increasing weed problems. There is no excuse for pollution, even if it does help leave some bass for me to catch.

Seems to me that RSA bodies have failed. They have been so dam busy slating the commercial fishing industry that the thought of lobby for the fishery to be properly policed has just slipped by. They have aimed at the un achievable and in doing so wasted time and money. But worst of all they have let down the very people they are meant to represent. I’m not pretending over fishing doesn’t exist of course it does, but it’s the inshore fishery that anglers are interested it, and if policed properly effort would be cut, and anglers would catch more fish. If the RSA lobbyists had aimed the campaign at better policing then these decent year classes of bass that we are seeing hear in the Thames estuary would have had a little more protection. As it is every Tom Dick and Harry who owns something that floats is out for their share and they aint all for personal consumption. Trouble is most of the lobbyists don’t know their arses from there elbows when it comes to commercial fishing and its practices, so started the campaign with slogans like WALLS OF DEATH, now they are spouting off about some bass fishermen using 35k of nets. Until they get their facts right and then aim their fire in the correct direction I’m afraid they are just going to continue to make themselves look silly to the outside world.

Hi Glenn. Well as you say there are no figures on this. However most weekends in the summer there can be several un licensed boats working the black water. Some pals of mine counted ten boats all working a few hundreds yards of gill nets a few weekends ago, they found this quite shocking. I explained that its been going on for ever! Now whether these guys are selling their catches or not I couldn’t tell you. But I doubt they all do it for love. There are several privately owned large angling boats that also sell their catches. I used to buy bass from a local commercial and then sell them to local restaurants; I had to stop as I was being under cut by anglers selling at £2.50 per pound. I only know about my local rivers but after talking with others in the know it appears its happening everywhere.

Stocks do seem to be on the mend with cod, bass, hounds, tope and thornbacks avalible to anglers. This is a good thing and they need to be looked after.

These facts are interesting and its good to know things are on the mend in many ways. However you are talking about listened boats, what about the pressure put on localised populations of fish like bass by un licensed commercial fishermen? Tagging has shown that bass will return to the same areas year after year. So a shoal can be very localised and be hit hard by un licensed netters and rod and liners. So to police the inshore fishery hard and bring down this pressure surly would be a good thing?

Even with my very limited mathematical skills I can work it out. Is simple really, cut pressure on a stock of fish leads to less fish being caught and more fish staying in the sea for us anglers to target. Targeting government to restrict legitimate commercial pressure has failed dismally. This gutless administration just aint got the stomach for it. So instead of waiting yet more valuable time why not lobby government to enforce existing laws. This would cut the part time un licensed effort fairly quickly after a succession of nicking started to build a deterrent. I understand it’s hard to prove un licensed netters and anglers are selling fish. But it is also hard to catch and prosecute drug deals but they get caught. God knows what state the country would be in if narcotics were run like our fishery.