Brian Carragher

Some of those comments from the Eco Zealots are a bit worrying in how the attribute human feelings and emotions to fish, I wonder how they manage to survive without eating or destroying living entities or organisims, I bet they never even considered that the eel would feed a multitude of families for months Sad individuals of whom we need to be very wary of

I often think peoples expectation of a specimen is somewhat wide of the mark, a lot is made of 20lbers but they are in the same league as hens teeth, pretty rare Even rarer, is a river 20lber and they are not as common as the angling press would have you believe, I use 15lb as my own guide to a really good river specimen and even then they don't turn up as often as you like, certain times of the year when shoal fish gather up may give you a bit more of an advantage to catching one, but as the shoal fish gather together so do the pike of all size ranges so you can't be certain of a lump even when the odds come slightly more in your favour A 15lb river fish is worth every bit of a 20lb lake fish in my opinion and also much rarer, different shape different lifestyle, different life expectancy as well so in every respect as the pike gets bigger and bigger your chances of connecting with a big lump get smaller and smaller How do big pike over 20lb represent the population of pike in a river, only a guess but I'd guess at less than 1%

Or Chew or join the syndicate up my way and fish for that big 40lber thats come out a few times recently (though it has to be said not for a few months now, wonder why?)

I know theres carp in Duddingston Loch, I'm staying round the corner from there at the moment in the Premier Inn, and that the rangers webpage shows pike on it but they don't say whether you can pike fish Duddingston, I presume theres pike in there given that theres perch roach bream and carp

I would say something, you never know anyone doing such an interview/assesment may well be testing you by asking a stupid or deliberatly wrong question But in an instance like that who would be right or wrong

Try your local authority it might just be one of their country parks and as such they're responsible for looking after it

One here http://www.whitbyseaanglers.co.uk/forum/in...p?topic=25275.0 Won't hang around long at that price, might even be worth the fuel to drive North

Nice one Who was more pleased then, you or your daughter, impressive fish any time anywhere

Have you fell off the wagon Its where they were Its called Reflections, reports of days gone by

And in one fell swoop Andy you've managed to kill any last vestiges of credibility that you were only just hanging on to , you have no game plan other than to bring salter to book and for no other reason than he's an ex MP and you see it as your duty to engage him Let me save you the embarrasment, he'll crucify you on a stage when you're open to public scrutiny yourself, you can't conduct yourself on here so you have no chance when the pressures on and you have to stand in front of an audience, give it up as a bad job and save yourself any further ridicule

Budgie 10/10 mate thats the most sensible post on here so far I've kept out of this so far as I tend to with all of these similar ban summer piking topics because I feel they're loaded anyway, I summer pike always have and always will but I fish in just about the most oxygenated water in england, the Tees. It has the higheat waterfall in england along with a series of others and comes from glacial type lakes high up on the Pennines but I do draw the line at fishing for any species including barbel in times of extreme drought Polls like this one only serve to cause division amongst anglers when there is no need for it and only serve to feed the anti's with half truths and misinformation which then gets used against us but in a much more professional and organised way than we as anglers are able to counter The danger to angling comes from anglers and from within angling from daft polls like this and from daft comments that call for bans of this and that and more especially of bans that don't affect the original posters, get a grip boys and girls and stop feeding trolls and P^ ta and associated anti's that might just bite you on the arse when you're least expecting it

You want an angling governing body to represent or accomodate canoeists, is'nt that what the BCU (British Canoe Union) is for, regardless of what various thoughts are on the effectiveness of the AT and its remit to speak on everyones behalf, its absolultely crazy to think that they would abdicate their responsibolities towards anglers and riparian owners and accomodate canoeists to the detriment of their own members Such a policy would be suicide and thats not a route I ever see them going down, to suggest such a thing and expect other anglers to support it is just plain daft, you might as well suggest that the British Vegan Society represents all the UK farmers interests, (thats a parralell not an instruction)

Can't see the pipe and slippers Barry

I'm not stopping you nor anyone else arguing your case but in presenting your case it allows others to ask pertinant questions of you. The fact that Martin Salter is an ex MP seems to me to be the only basis of your problem with him, the fact that he challenged you to a debate, in other words put up or shut up, does'nt give you the right to invite other people onto a platform for a debate without first Oking it with him first before you pillory him for his non acceptance of your now new format of 4 debators. Martin Salter may be many things to many men but the one thing he is not is stupid, why do you expect him to appear on a panel that looks like its rigged for a lynching Please explain your "sanitised version of reality"; because as a self confessed once a year canoist, I have to ask how real is your problem or are you just looking to hang Martin salter out to dry purely because he's an ex MP Your comment above is not without form On every topic and forum you've posted in you take exactly the same position when people question your motives, you get very personal and offensive with folk and do yourself and what case you believe you have no good at all Posting in the way you do is not what I call public debate and I've done a bit of the public debating myself so know what I'm talking about, debate is about the exchange of views and positioning and trying to present a point. By doing as you do and try and infer words to someone that they've never written nor spoken only weakens your argument I've never said I don't like or am sensitive to public debate( as far as I'm concerned bring it on) but with debate and positioning come scruitiny and it seems you don't like that hence your often personal attacks which do nothing but weaken your case There are many on here who are highly critical of the Angling Trust and are'nt afraid to say so but they present their case fairly and objectivly, you should try that sometime,so trying to justify canoing rights by giving out spuriou comments and details over access rights that happens to be innacurate again weakens your case, just as much as trying to expand your argument with the AT and Salter by referring to barbel stocking of a river and using that as either an excuse for canoing down the river or as another excuse for bashing Salter and the AT, neither of whom I'm saying or right or I'm supporting but in the balance of fairness its only right that if someone is'nt here to defend themselve its not right that you have sole rights to be either offensive towards them(or any other poster) or allow some of your wilder statements to go unchallenged

Well put Leon

And a happy New Year to you too Barry Yes as you know I'm up for another bash at conger fishing, keep me in mind if you organise one

I am being serious Andy and I would'nt support you in your endevours to give away rights that others have paid for and continue to pay for As for being threatened or feeling threatened, you need to give yourself a shake, I feel more threatened by a cold 99 ice cream in winter than I do by either you or your efforts What surprises me more is that more posters on here have'nt told you the same

You've challenged him to a debate and I assume from that, Martin Salter would think it were to between you and him. Now you seem to want to widen it without any reference back to him, why do you just assume he'll go along with that If this is your format: There needs to be a debating panel comprising 4 representatives, Canoe England (??), Angling Trust (Salter), Recreational Sea Anglers (??) and Independent (me).[/b why would he want to attend After all you're hardly seen as an independant after your highly publicised canoe trips on You Tube and missives on various forums regarding canoe access on rivers, if you're looking for support on here from anglers who are prepared to give away their rights of access to a river they've paid for then I think you're barking up the wrong tree

Don't see any merit in resurrecting this topic Andy, its nearly 8 years old and Peter Collins is dead and buried so can't see where you're going with it

I have'nt seen the you tube video and won't even bother to watch it, I'm not surprised that someone at the top decided to axe him as he's got to be the most unfunny comedian ever, would'nt watch him if he was performing for nothing at the bottom of the street As comics go I'd rate herpes as funnier than him

Did you come to any decisions on sounders then?

Now you've digested that lot you can have a look at transducers They come in through the hull or transom versions and you are better off with a transom mounted one They come in dual beam, narrow beam and side scanning, you only require a narrow beam Lastly they are rated in Kilohurts, which simply means the bigger the Kzh no. the more power goes through the transducer to give better bottom images, if you're only using it on fairly shallow inland waters then theres no need to overspend on a bigger more powerful transducer if a cheaper one will work just as well, the more power the transducer uses then the quicker the battery dies unless you have a charging system

Andrew Not too sure if any of the replies so far address what you're looking for but I have a sounder and have had others in the past, also have a GPS sysyem on my boat as well as the sounder so have a little experience of what I think you're after A cheap and quality sounder, forget the term fishfinder, is going to be either an Eagle or Lowrance version of the same unit. A black and white sounder is all you need unless you start getting into the real intracacies of bottom definition and differences in the densities of the bottom, ie hard ground or soft indeterminate stuff with lots of weed Really it odes'nt need to be a colour screen to show you that as the grey scale and image below the bounced sonar will show on the screen and with a little practice you can differenciate between the two, the denser the image directly below the ground the harder it is, when you hit mud the definition below the screen image changes Get a screen with as many pixals as you can for the money you want to spend as the image quality varies quite a bit from model to model and manufacturer to manufacturer, I have the Lowrance X96 which is a black and white unit and I use it on my boat at sea, it shows water temperature and if used on freshwater it will show the thermocline where the water temperature changes but you need a fair depth of water to be able to show that and generally you need to be on still water rather than moving water Most sounder units don't show speed unless you buy another unit to attach to your sounder, I don't have one and rely on the GPS unit to give me that should I require it, a simple way to observe drift speed is to use a weight and a bright hummell attached to plenty of rope and let it overboard when you've sorted out your drift, then observe which way the wind pushes you away from the hummell and at how fast a rate My tranducer is the transom mounted one and I remove it every time I bring the boat ashore to keep it safe from theieves so it very easy to make a bracket or fixing mount to attach it to a broom shank and then fasten the broom shank to the boat with quick clamps, bungees or even a couple of lashings of rope Having looked at a few different units over the years I've always gone bak to Lowrance and given that most of the commercial boats round here operate with Lowrance seems a good enough endorsment to me, I got my first unit some 33 years ago when it was paper and stylus to give bottom marks and have got to say that todays units are far superior in both value and performance to anything I could buy then Have a look on here http://www.jgtech.com/index.htm, its where my electronic gear is bought from, try and get as many pixels as possible, think mines 480 by 480 so it gives great bottom definition but theres some cheaper Lowrance units on there which work equally as well Any questions then come back to me

Theres a very real belief that Whitby as an area has been sacrificed by the SBC (Scarborough Borough Council) in order to protect and divert cash into Scarborough and as a result theres a lot of mistrust of SBC which quite frankly they (sbc) do very little to address, if Whitby was to succeed as it should then it's probably time to look again at how Whitby is managed by any local authority, there's a very good case for Whitby to be in charge of its own destiny

Quality