Ian Burrett

The wrasse certainly won't touch the Gulp crab bait, the flatties won't take the Gulp Lug worm and as for using the worm as a lure, a strip 6-9 inches long and 1/2 an inch wide cut from a white polythene bag will work just as well.

At last SOS and SSACN have got confirmation on the news that we have been long waiting for, which confirms the 5% bycatch limit on spurdog will apply to all European waters. To quote the Scottish Marine Directorate, This will “effectively prevent any EU vessel from pursuing a targeted spurdog fishery”. Although its taken four years, Well done to all those that wrote to their MSP’s and help make this happen. It shows collectively we can make a difference. Although the Porbeagle measures didn’t go as far as we wanted the MD have stated they will be seeking sharp reductions in future negotiations. The EU has also recognised the need for a separate management of skate and rays. More needs to be done to help rebuild these populations but things are certainly moving the right way. Below is the letter we received from the government today. Dear Mr Burrett SHARK CONSERVATION Thank you for your email of 4 December to Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, about the EU Commission’s proposals for sharks and rays in the 2008 TAC and quota regulation. As I work in the Sea Fisheries (Conservation) Division, I have been asked to respond. The final agreement reached at December Council represents a 25% cut in the TAC for skates and rays with more stringent reporting requirements on species landed, the application of the 5% by-catch provision to spurdog across the North-East Atlantic and the introduction of a porbeagle TAC. On porbeagle, we had anticipated stronger measures from the Commission and are not convinced that the agreed TAC will result in a reduction in porbeagle catches in 2008 compared to 2007. Nevertheless, the establishment of a TAC is an important first step in limiting effort on this stock and preventing any increase in catches during 2008. In future negotiations we will be seeking sharp reductions in the TAC alongside other measures designed to protect the porbeagle stock. The outcome on skates and rays is more positive with a 25% cut in the TAC, a continuation of the 25% by-catch limit and stricter reporting requirements. Together these moves represent a continuing effort cut on skate and ray stocks and the first steps towards separate management of different skate and ray species. Finally, on spurdog the 5% by-catch rule, limiting landings of spurdog to 5% of the total catch, will now be applied across the whole of the North-East Atlantic for all EU vessels, effectively preventing any EU vessel from pursuing a targeted spurdog fishery. I’m sure you will agree this is positive outcome for spurdog. As you know the EC are to consult on and develop their long-awaited Shark Plan of Action, and have given a target date of December 2008 for its completion. This gives us all an opportunity to examine the existing science and the data requirements for sound management measures in all shark fisheries in which the Community participates. It is clearly important that we keep in mind the international commitments and obligations made by the EU, and the Scottish Government will seek as far as possible to persuade the European Commission to render those commitments into evidence based, robust and enforceable management measures. I hope you find this response useful. Yours sincerely PAUL McCARTHY Marine Directorate Sea Fisheries (Conservation) Division __________________ cheers Ian Burrett

Although in principal it makes sense to have one governing body, it might be better for the organisations to come clean and state that the reason why there is a rush for a unified body is because Sport Scotland and Sport England have said they will no longer give handouts to different fractions of angling as they want to deal with one body. In other words if the different disciplines don't amalgamate there will be no monies to run match angling. My main concern is, there is enough confrontation within RSA already; adding the game and course boys into the melting pot makes it hard to see how harmony can ever be reached.

Hi Chris I guess the main difference is the commercials are fighting to save the livelihoods and for a lot anglers it's just an occasional hobby. I still think Bertie has a lot of influence within the fisheries dept. Re the Golden mile, I personally don't think it would benefit Scotland that much. I would prefer to see regions closed on specific conservation grounds with angling and environmentally friendly fishing practises allowed. These could be as big or small as needed to preserve the intended species or habitat. Personally i would like to see the whole of the Solway declared a MPA I can't speak for the East Coast but on the west and south west coast a five mile ban wouldn't do any good because the stocks of Cod, Haddock and Whiting according to ICES are at the lowest ever recorded and there is no sign of any recovery. The spawning biomass has gone and there's nothing to replace them I've said it many times before but in just 19 years 10 species can be considered locally extinct and a further 10 are caught only as as juveniles in the patch I fish. It would need vast areas closed to help the North Irish sea

You make the commercials sound like one big happy family. The truth is different fractions of the commercial industry fall out in lumps, just like different fractions of RSA The main difference is the commercials are better organised and can afford to employ people like Bertie Armstrong and members of the legal profession to fight their cause.

What a shock I was speaking to Dave just a couple of weeks ago about SOS matters He will be missed by many. If you knew Dave you can leave a tribute on his site at http://www.essexcharterfishing.co.uk/

We have just received confirmation that we are now officially a registered Scottish charity - so all those who have held of joining and contributing until it was tax deductible, may now do so !! I'd particularly like to thank Denis Kelly for all the hard work he put into developing the Constitution and 'red tape' supporting materials - thanks also go to those of you who provided additional input. Finally, to help boost our funds at SSACN we are holding a draw on www.ssacn.org for an ABU 6500 CT Sports Mag which has been kindly donated by Eric McLean of the Sports Shop in Stranraer. See details at www.ssacn.org Registered Scottish charity No. SC039015

More on what Borg has to say at http://www.ssacn.org 2nd and 3rd report down

See http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/press_corner...com07_88_en.htm More detail here http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/press_corner...ble07_88_en.pdf Final decisions on all proposals will be rubber stamped on December 17-19th

The EU commission recommendation's are out for the 2008 TAC's and providing things stay the same then the targeted fishery for the Spurdog in Scotland and the Irish Sea will be stopped. The commission is recommending that the 5% bycatch rule imposed for the North Sea last year will apply to all EU waters. The final decision will be announced on the 17th of December. Keep your fingers crossed

It looks like they've downgraded it. Just 30 mph for Scotland now not the 42mph windguru was originally predicting

Hi Ken I suspect the decision had little to do with Shaw. He relies on civil servants to make decisions for him. Certainly in Scotland If we write a letter to the minister, it is opened by the fisheries dept. who then write a suggested reply. The minister then just rubber stamps it

Will this new organisation ban Scottish membership as FACT did?

Dave Morton from SOS has written to the skipper concerned and he has kindly agreed to get involved in the UK Shark tagging programme and return all Porbeagle

As the Porbeagle shark is critically endangered and hopefully their will be a Zero TAC after next months EU talks so their is no justification for an angler killing one

Hi Ian Thanks for the help,It looks like my guaranteed 24 hour delivery has failed again

I am expecting delivery of a new laptop with Vista installed. I have also bought a 4 GB memory stick to transfer data from my PC to laptop. The guy i bought it off suggests the data transfer could be unstable. Has anyone experienced this?

After having learned earlier this year of two new areas where common skate have started to show again in Scotland; I was pleased to hear today that a few have started to show in the Bristol channel Dr David Sims, Deputy Director (Research), and Senior Research Fellow of the Marine Biological Association of the UK, writes in a letter to SOS We are planning to do some electronic tagging of common skate next summer in Loch Sunart. The common skate tagging forms part of a wider tagging programme we are conducting on skates and rays that is principally focussed in the western English Channel and Bristol Channel. We have recently found common skate in deeper parts of the Bristol Channel which raises the question of connectedness with the Scottish concentration around Mull. The behavioural work is complemented by studies already underway here in our ecology group on assessing population structure of skates and rays with molecular genetic techniques. Long may the smallest of recoveries continue __________________

How can the Cod stocks be recovering?. The demise is caused by global warming and not overfishing according to our learned friends :lol:

Thanks for your replies I have found if you hold the cursor on the grey border on the preview pane and right click a new menu appears which allows you make the font larger, but only as a temporary measure. This returns to the default next time outlook is opened

Hi John Thanks for your help but i still haven't solved the problem. Its the font within the preview pane that i wish to enlarge not the preview pane itself. I have enlarged all the other fonts in the message lists etc. As the link you gave me states getting a bigger monitor doesn't automatically mean bigger fonts

Hi I have just changed my monitor to a flat screen.and had to play around with the font sizes ] I can't find how to increase the size of the preview pane font or incoming emails in Outlook Any help would be appreciated

Hi Norrie Digger was a good mate of mine. He certainly had an interesting life. He was a Japenese prisoner of war and carried all the baggage that brings. Fourty years on he wouldn't entertain anything associated to Japan He had a range of fishing rods that were supurb for their time. In fact probably the first rods i had seen that bent right through. He retired to Ozzie when his mother in Law died and spent the last few years of his life fishing the mangrove swamps just outside his home. He was fishing into his late eighties and died about 8 years ago

Dreadful news. My thoughts go out to the families

How about this one http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h317/Ian...UK05Basker1.jpg