StuMac

Not sure about the 'too easy' part Toggle. Seems that the easier it is to get permission to legally carry a firearm (and yes, this does include hand guns), the lower the violent crime rate is. Remind me how many people were killed by hanguns in the USA last year - somewhere around 11,000 I think???

I think you need a very special set of circumstances to get a big surge, and they just don't hapen that often. Peak winds coming right at the top of a big tide. How long did it take for the fishing to recover after the big floods?? For the past 5 years I've cycled back and forth across the Tay bridge almost every day. The river is 1.5 miles wide at this point, which is about 5 miles from the open sea and even on a realtively calm day it's amazing how big an effect wind direction can have on the water levels. An onshore gale with a rising spring tide and loads of water coming down the Tay usually means a flood in Perth, which is ~10 miles further upstream.

A 10 cm rise in sea level since 1953 is quite something!

Dr Rose would certainly disagree with you, as would most of the angling community. I'm sorry but Dr Rose would almost certainly agree! He maintains fish cannot *experience* pain in the same way we do, and I agree with him. I've never seen anything that contradicts the idea that painful stimuli are sensed by free nerve endings in the skin. These are found in fish. It is not a question of citing papers, the basic anatomy was worked out a long time ago and nobody has really ever disagreed since. Read any standard textbook of vertebrate anatomy. Higher vertebrates have more specialised organs that allow them to differentiate pressure, heat, cold etc and these allow a more subtle range of sensations. However, the basic free ending sensory fibres are found in all vertebrates (and most invertebrates). In afct the people from Edinburgh showed that some of these more specialised sensory endings are also found in fish, which caused the fuss last summer. The argument amongst biologists is over the extent that fish can *experience* pain in the way we do - there is absolutely no reason to beleive that fish simply lack the ability to sense painful stimuli. In fact the idea that a free living animal could evolve with no mechanism to tell it when something nasty was happening to it is just stupid. This difeferenc between sensing pain and experiencing it may sound subtle, but its actually a very importantof idea that has largely come from the work of Pat Wall. What started him off thinking about it was when he noticed that the capacity to experience pain could be switched on and off in very strange ways. People who have undergone horific injuries (e.g. in battle) often report that they experienced no pain despite the fact that limbs were ripped off. In complete contrast, amputees quite often experience very real and intense pain from limb that aren't there any more. The pani they experience is very, very real (in fact some amputees say its actualy the worst thing about loosing a limb) and yet no nerve endings are being stimulated cos they're feeling pain in a part of their body that isn't there any more. These things happen because our ability to experince pain is a very advanced brain function. What Dr Rose said is that fish do not have sufficiently advanced brains to allow thme to exprience pain in this way. To a fish a painful stimulus is just that, something that tells them something grim is happening and which trigers a pattern of escape behaviour. Once the stimulus stops, things go back to normal. Although they have responded to a painful stimuli, they have not experienced pain in the same way that we do. What the people from Edinburgh showed last summer actually doesn't alter this arguments in any way. As for game angling ethics - look at some of the stuff Hugh Falkus has written about catch / release in Trout and Salmon! Talk to some of the anglers who ceremoniously pour whiskey onto the Tay on the last day of the season to 'Toast their Quarry'! Pipe bands playing in the background, fireworks bursting over head. Tell one of them you let a salmon flap to death on the bank but it was OK cos fish can't suffer and see what reply you get. I even heard Rex Hunt say how fish should be killed immediately if they are to be taken.

I think the word you are looking for is 'mammal', and I wouldn't be so dogmatic about fish being unable to sense pain. Animals a lot more 'primitive' than fish (worms) can be conditioned to change their behavior by 'painful' stimuli. Fish have all the necessary nerves to feel pain, and it's nonsensical to suggest that any free living animal could have evolved without a sensation of pain to tell it that something really nasty was happening and it'd better get away as fast as possible. Game anglers are all told that a fish should be killed straight away so as not to prolong it's suffering unecessarily. It is considered very bad form to unhook a salmon before knocking it on the head and several prominant game anglers have come out against catch and release because it is wrong to put a salmon through the stress of capture if you're not going to take it. (There was an interesting link to a Norwegian group that presented their arguments against catch / realease on here) At least one section of the angling community is quite happy with the idea that fish can suffer!!! (Although they may well be the section that support the CA) The issue is whether fish are sufficiently evolved to be able to experience pain in the same way we do, and I think the answer to that is "no", and thionk that any observant angler would agree.

Oxford Dictionary time! Bloodsport, a sport involving the wounding or killing of ANIMALS. A fish is not an animal. For your information I am not opposed to shooting and I was brought up in the country. Not ***again***. Peter - this is at least the second time you've come out with this nonsense. If you really want people to take you seriously, then this is one point you realy ought to get right. A fish *is* an animal. There is no room for debate on this subject, it is a simple fact of biology which you just have to learn.

That they're getting hacked off with being asked that question??? How can you possibly expect anyone to prove that point - its impossible. Live baiters (legal or otherwise) to not leave records of the fish that they have move about the country, and neither do they generally leave samples that can be analysed. That is the whole point - moving fish around the country in this uncontrolled and totally unregulated way is a bad thing. The PAC agrees, the PAAS agrees, in fact I don't know a single angling body that disagrees, and I doubt that there's a fishery authority anywhere in the world that would allow it. What's more, I'm sure that deep down inside you probably agree too! Asking this question is of absolutely no significance to the EA. In Canada people with out of province licences are not allowed to use livebait unless its with fish purchased at the lakeside from the Natural resources people. This is a much more sensible and effective way of dealing with the problem. Who would lug a bucket of baits to Windemere if you could just by them where you launched your boat?

Could be that as well I suppose!

This sounds like a ritual in an organisation called the Hash House Harriers, which is a very informal running / drinking / wild behaviour club set up by British ex. pats in the far East. There are branches everywheer that there are a significant number of ex pats - at least a dozen Hashes in HK (I was in Little Sai WAn if anyone's logging on), and quite a few have appeared back home now. A meeting is called a 'Hash' and takes the form of an informal jog around a course marked out with chalk etc by a pair of hares. Nobody really knows where the course goes (apart from the Hares) as there are lots of false trails which are dead ends (indicated by a chalked 'T'). There are usually 'Wimp' and 'Rambo' options, and in some clubs the 'rambo' course can be quite hard. Once back at base, there are bins full of ice / beer and, after everyone stands around drinking for a while before heading of to the after race dinner, which is known as the 'On On'. Hashes have an very odd set of rules, which must be observed on penalty of a forfiet. Most have some sort of contraption which must be worn / carried by whoever comes first in the previous meeting. It sound like this is what you've encountered!!

I would have thought most people's reaction to the sight of a balif approaching would be to empty the bait bucket over the other side of the boat rather than to start mucking about trying to catch each fish and knock it on the head. The EA needs evidence to prosecute, and if they done't find live fish in the boat they have no evidence. If they se you tipping a bucket out, just say that you were bailing the boat out a bit or had filled a bucket with water to clean your hands after handling dead baits. Have some slimy dead sea baits and a bar of soap in the boat and what can they say? Of course you would have intriduced live fish into the water, which is specifically what they were trying to avoid in the first place. There have actually been 'sea baits only' rules on a few Scottish Lochs with protection orders for some time now, and more will be coming once the law's are changed to allow it.

I actually think that pike are one species that could be removed in quite large numbers without damaging fisheries, provided there was a 'slot' system as in the US. The breed and grow very fast look at the populations that have become established on trout reservoirs. The Ontaria ministry of Natural resources (MNR, yes I know that's in Canada) has a very similar system to the US. Pike fishing there is very popular and very well regulated, and a lot of fish are taken for the table. The fishing is very good and freely available. A few pointers from Canadian system: 1 They set rules and *enforce* them. The main roads back in Toronoto will often have road blocks on them on Sunday holiday evenings. This is the MNR stoppiong and searching cars with tackle or towing boats. They inspect licences, boat launching records and catches. 2 It is not a free for all. Every year waters are designated according to needs. Some are 'fish sanctuaries' where there is absolutely no fishing, some are catch and release only, some have slot limits, some allow a single specimen to be removed. They have spotter planes that check that no boats are fishing illegally. 3 All catches returns are closely monitored so that the number of fish being removed from each water is known. They also put enormous amounts of effort into monitoring fish populations, so the effects of angling pressure are monitored closely. 4 The facilities available for anglers are amazing - all provided by the province. 5 Angling is very popular and, to most Canadians, the idea of being an 'anti' is just impossible to understand. 6 It is illegal to do anything with a game fish remnoved from a water apart from eat it. Throw a pike up the bank 'cos you don't like pike and you will be prosecuted if caught. All Canadian anglers I know would deplore this behaviour and have no hesitation is reporting anyone who did this. 7 The amount of support that Angline gets in Canada and the US is absoutely fantsatic, and it is all fishing for truely wild fish. There are no clubs, syndicates with waiting lists etc. Just buy a licence, obey the rules and fish almost anywhere.

PS Wisconsin fishing regulations do not allow culling so what you put in the livewell has to stay. Maximum limit of 5 bass and 5 walleye with the largest 3 of each counting. What does this mean and whats the logic behind it?

It always amazes me that UK anglers can be so self righteous about killing fish. Despite the great care we go on about, fishing in most of the UK is basically rubbish compared to what's available even in the most densley populated parts of the US! What's more, fishing in the US is run and protected by the State game organisations - they have strictly enforced bag and size limits. The US philosophy seems to be that if you protect the environment then anglers can take limit numbers of good fish without harming the population. In Britain we only to be interested in protecting the fish but let the environemnt go to pot. Most anglers in this country fish for domesticated carp in ponds that are stocked to levels that simply couldn't be sustained if it wasn't for the fact that anglers also throw masses of ground bait in!

Although you don't live bait anymore, this argument is still trotted out all the time. It is *nonsense*. Were you in a position to even know if you'd introduced diseases into the water?? How did you survey the fish population? Do you have the training and experience to even recognise fish diseases / parasites? Even if what you say is true it is a totally sterile argument. The EA are not under any obligation to wait until a population of fish *has* been seriuosly damaged by disease before they ban live baiting. There job is to *prevent* this happening and they have identified the unregulated and random moving of fish about the country as a potential danger. That's why it was banned, because of the harm it *could* do not because of the harm it *has* done. As you say, most pike anglers had bait tanks back then (I did). The difference now is that people travel more and there are more pike anglers. There's also a change in attitudes. Stocking / mocvement of fish wasn't seen as a bad thing in the 50s and 60s. The Angling Times actually had a highly publicised barbel stocking programme on the Severn, which I can't see happening now.

I seriously eat pike! Got introduced to it by a German friend. I now quite often take a 3 - 4 lb jack and put it on the BBQ. Plenty of meat on one that size for 3 - 4 people and nice gamey taste! You can take a lot of pike in that size range out of a water without damaging the fishing. In fact most poor pike waters are actually swarmming with fish that size. Despite what people say, pike are not an endangered species.

Have you thought about the River Tyne???

Pike used to be called Luce. Isaac Walton's chapter on Pike fishing in the Complete Angler (1653) is called 'Observations of the Luce or pike; with diections how to fish for him'

In my experience the really *big* ragworms come from areas of shingle rather than mud and live right at the bottom of the beach - you can rely on finding them at really low tides. There's an area three miles from my house where you can sometines get 2 - 4 big ones in every forkfull. I go out at really low tides and dig like mad for half an hour, then go higher up the beach and out onto the mud to dig lugworms as the tide comes in. Might be different in other areas.

The river Wear just downstream of Duram ice rink used to be *swarming* with lampreys at this time of year. There were literally thousands of them. You'd see great knots of them which I think were loads of males all trying to latch onto a single female. They come in to spawn but its a one way trip as they all die - like pacific salmon. They were mainly the smaller type (about 18 inches long) but there were a few of the big one's you described. I think they're sea lampreys and the smaller ones are river lampreys. There's a 3rd type, the brook lamprey, which is only about 8 inches long. I found them really interesting animals, but havn't been there for about 20 years so I don't know if they still get such big runs of them. Probably not the way most things seem to go.

Just read the Nowegian thing again. I found it interesting as it seems to start from the premis that "Angling is good", and that the way to maintain good angling is to restrict access to the water to a level that catches can be sustained. As I said before, this approach may well work in Scandinavia. However, I think there's a point that might be missed and that is that, even if fishing for food, it is an angler's *choice* wether he kills a fish or not. In general, it is better to remove a limited number of small fish from a water and leave the big ones in place. If an angler catches a big fish, then surely it is good conservation practise, and ethical, for him to release it back into the environment and carry on fishing for a more modestly sized one to eat?

Just read the link from Norway - I found that to be a very well argued case, certainly motre logical that a lot of the crap you hear from anti angling groups here. It is probably only applicable to countries like scandinavia and canada which have huge natural resources and small populations. Canada has a very complex system where some waters are 'fish sanctuaries' with no angling at all, others are catxch and release only, and others where you can take fish. They constantly monitor catches and switch waters between categories every season. They also have bag limits that are enforced.

I can remeber standing no the bridge in the middle of Tubingen a couple of years ago, and watching the massive shoals of Chub and Dace. Never seen anything like it in the UK, so the Germans must be doing something right. Or maybe they just don't eat chub and dace so nobody fishes for them?

This is not really news - fish farming as currently practised is bad for the environment. Things will get worse if plans to farm cod etc., get underway. Although it may sound like a good idea, that will restrict the number of fish taken from the se, the problem is what do you feed the fish on? The answer is almost invariably other fish. Far from reducing the amount of fish taken from the sea, fish farming creats a market for fish species that can be ground up to make feed for farmed fish. These tend to be small species like sand eels. You basicaly take fish out of the sea that would have provided a food source that could have sustained a population of wild cod, and feed them to farmed cod. I recon the only way to solve the problem is to mange the wild stocks properly by restricting the catch to a sustainable level. Iceland and Norway have done this very sucesfully. The sea angling of the Nowegian coast is execellent compared to here.

In the days before boilies I once had a small pike on a large lump of bread paste that I was reeling back in.