hastfish

well said wurzel a good informative answer by someone who knows what he is talking about,the same cycles have appeared in southern n/sea .,,stocks of most fish at all time high.scaremongering by so called experts is the main problem nowadays but us fishermen are the easiest people to point at and blame

good for you steve ,dont answer the fact your still dumping good food and a income over the side .im not getting in a row over ways of netting with you thats not the way forward and as for saying we in the s/east caught all the cod ,you having a laugh.not joining nutfa up to you also ,if they ever get anywhere with qouta an the like youre be saying no thanks then. the biggest point is cods are being dumped ,released every day ,not many go back un damaged no matter what your method of capture ,so how many survive.is this a conservation tool .no. the way forward is technical measures .meantime endless cods are dying ,never to be seen again by commercials or anglers.i would rather land it and give it away then feed the star fish and whelks and pick up someone elses discards, white and stinking in my nets no matter how long they have been down.you forget us small netters only catch cods when the soles go in midto late october we cant go scalloping or whiting bashing ,what should we do till febuary ,tie up and go broke.im not doing that ,i work as hard as any one ,what ive got i earned ,im not going to roll over and die because the goverment will not stand up to europe. cod dumping is immoral and disgusting and we should not be doing it.

missed the point toerag ,discarding is killing a now healthy stock.meaning less for every one and a disgusting waste of food and a source of income and sport. afraid the only muppets about are the suits who discide qoutas,ones that cant see past there bigoted views and the ones in my tackle box.

why is it that noone has mentioned what is going on with the cods at the moment. has no one got a comment about the disgusting waste of fish,future fish and what it is doing to the sea bed. I know a few out there would like us to dissapear leaving all the fish just for them .but afew know that the cods are at a level not seen for many a year and the angling press are telling us about cod galore.... but the numbers of discards is reaching disgusting levels and no one seems to be shouting.boats here are having to dump anything from 10lb to 300lb per trip of cods from 1k up to 15k,and were still fishing for soles and before i get paul joy and his fellow criminals shouted at me this is a different case andits worthy of proper discussion.because discarding is being talked about all over europe,norway seems to be shouting the loudest while our suits bury there heads.

w urzel was right [cowboys] that is,nt how we make a living and we rarely catch birds and the like.a lot of these nets im sorry to say are put down by immigrants and the like after they stole them of the beach ,pots as well dissapear[lobster] and they dont worry about undersize;discards they eat it all.there are bylaws but they dont no them and they dont care annyway.sorry to upset any one but thats how it is very close to us.

must be over 10s to have any quota

it wont effect the french,spanish there being subsidised by there governments.our boats are all ready tying up because of it.15 pound a can.

most of our bass is caught as a by catch,we have a few boats that drift them and most of their catch is smaller ones .they are snapped up localy and fetch a good price .the larger ones are only wanted by a few resturants,and they only want a few the others go to france and they dont make the money,they have boats targeting bass constantly,so our prices are kept low. the public has set the standard they want, tv cooking shows use farmed bass or small fillets,look in your local super store ,bass from greece, easy to cook,convenient size,moderatley priced.so at least we take a cross section of the stock.but i will admit that the way things are going with cods more boats may choose to target them,were not really a bass fishery, eastbourne is, they seem to corner the market and do catch a large number of them.small and large alike and alot of them are line caught. the public also need to learn more about fish preperation and not just by fish prepared for the pan or barbie.

there is no demand for big bass,that is why the industry shouted about size,s going up, eu boats,farmed are all plate size .the market dictates size and they want small .that we might not agree with but we stood to lose a lot of money,while others prosperd.time will come when sizes increase ,i hope they will ,mesh sizes should be increased and the gov should listen to us all.we would suffer a year or two but the fish would be better size[mature].and let us fish [no qouta] but mesh size restrictions.i do agree h.a we have got to clever with electronic gadgets.so mesh size ,some sort of capping of effort may be the way forward but the whole of the eu would not follow.i for one could not afford to have this done straight away but a fazing in over time i could live with.any way no,one has come up with a realistic distance yet???

there all well and good an weve all seen them before,illeagle set nets,lost driftnets ect.were not allout to destroy the enviroment.and we dont all haul up birds, sharks[never had one].if you put nets down illeagilly and dont do them regually in shallow water i would expect to see diving birds,90% of our fishing locally is done in 30_40ft of water.we see them regually shot out from angling boats on saturdays back of the rocks then unable to get back to them cos of breeze on the sunday picked up days later rolled up with dead fish,cormerants,guilimots ect.even had them over lobster pots in 20ft water 5o yards of under the cliffs.also the beachpeggers, even shallower,so you cant scream commercials every time you see a bit of gillnet.so come on befair and try to come up with sollutions to the problems we are all facing or anglers will disapear just like commercials trying to earn a living.

loverly pictures of nets them.one big point though do you think they sit like that? i wish by the time tide,weed,and general human waste hit them they stand less than a third of there full height.the only time they stand up is high,low water slack so not for long.but i do dissagree with nets shot as close as the pictures.but no one seems to have come up with a sensible distance that they want commercials to keep out ,1 mile will never happen.so what would be the compermise 500m,1000m back of low water ?certain areas shut to nets . even i would like to see trawling stopped with in 2miles of the shore.but we have got to work together and come up with some answers all the gov will do is make things worse for everyone.

sussex regs are1.5 mt below the water at any state of tide,and that is a fair way out for our boats we also have ski buoys,that we have to be back of with nets,not pots.most of the time in our area its parttimers,hobby boats that try to push this and never seem to get tugged by the fisheries as there out and back before there finished checking us.

trouble is some anglers dont want to talk sensible though

what are your local by laws regarding set nets and how deep is it there.does seem close.

so were do we all begin then. there is already talk of banning towing of chainmats over a large area of sussex sea bed.quite a few netsman would like to see this and a lot agree that the damage they do is almost irreversible.static nets dont do the damage to the ground that they do nor potters so were do you call a halt.we all dont have huge towing boats so wich ones would u throw out.alot of smaller boats are single handed, work enough gear to make a wage[not a living any more]and work close in because of this.so how far out would anglers like to see them?