wurzel

Hello Barry You are making the same mistake as every body else with this discard issue. Your first link concerns gear modifications to reduce discards of undersized fish , this work has been going on for at least twenty years that I know of (fishery scientists know how to keep a good milk cow a live for as long as possible) .Also the boats had an increase in quota (the carrot used to get the fishermen involved in thier work) so this would have helped with the marketable sized fish not being dicarded. Your second link concerns the discard of large marketable cod of which are becoming more abundant and difficult for fishermen to avoid catching while fishing for other species, so if the proposed cut of 20% in quota goes ahead it will lead to more marketable cod being discarded. The discards of undersized fish and the discard of marketable fish are two totally different issues. One can be reduced but never totally eliminated and the other can only be resolved by shooting all fishery management on sight. .

Hello Phone Could you survive on 50 bushels of corn per acre today?

Hello Bob Most only know what they have been told (Brain washed) about the Grand Banks cod fishery, few talk about the fact that cod have returned to the Grand Banks to about 70 to 80 % of previous levels, fishermen say even more. these mature fish appeared more or less over night baffling scientist as to where they came from. Few talk about the fact that the Grand Banks cod fishery has declined (I refuse to use the word collapsed) several times in it's history, generally every 50 or 60 years, as for the North Sea there never has been a stable cod fishery that's why the UK fleet fished Iceland and Norway waters for cod. Stock fluctuations are not a problem for fishermen, they change and adapt as generally while one stock goes down another increases it's the way it's always been, another little known fact is that the weight of biodiversity stays the same. It only becomes a problem when management gets involved and don't forget Bob the management industry is huge and much more lucrative than the fishing industry. so is writing books like The End of the Line and Silent Seas.

Hello seafoods So much for local knowledge, over the years I've listened on the VHF to a few cock up's by Thames coast guard, it happens. I haven't heard that Thames coast guard is to be closed , last I heard was that Yarmouth was to go and Thames would cover south and Humber to the north of Yarmouth.

Hello seafoods I think this would only happen if the places of the same name were in close proximity of each other as calls are received and relayed by shore based aerials, for example my area is covered by Thames coast guard based at Walton-on the Naze if I am working 20 miles to the north and call Thames coast guard they will reply that I am loud and clear on their Bawdsy aerial if I'm closer to walton they receive the call on their aerial at Walton on the Naze and 20 miles to the south from their aerial at Bradwell after that you start to come into aerials that relay to Dover coast guard so instantly any call is narrowed down to which ever aerial covers that area.

Wrong Bob A quote from the Trawler Photo furum says: The Sunday Times chose to class an adult cod as aged over 13. But that's not merely an adult cod. It's an ancient cod. "Cod start to mature at ages one and two and they're fully mature by six," says Dr Carl O'Brien, the UK's chief fisheries science adviser. So we shouldn't be surprised that there are very few cod aged over 13 (in fact fewer than 60 have been recorded in the North Sea in past 30 years) just as we shouldn't be surprised there aren't very many humans over 100.

Hello Barry Commercials aren’t wishing for any thing here, it's the propaganda machine helping the management brigade justify regulating anglers in the near future.

Hello Paul I remember that that the seals were always a pain during the spring fishing, during the autumn they are probably feeding on the herring, I have two or three seals patrolling along my nets every day at the moment with a preference for bass along with a few soles , they have even learnt to follow the trawlers and either chew the heads off or pull any soles that are sticking out of the cod end. While I agree they are a pain and a threat to my wallet I don't think they are a threat to the fish stocks. I am sure that I read probably in the fishing news an article on the French whiting fishery, they claimed it to be a very clean fishery with little by catch, with the cod recovery plan and cod avoidance schemes I'm sure they would not be allowed otherwise. Hello Stevieg The french fleet used to congragate off here at Harwich mainly offshore 30 or 40 miles but for the last 6 or 7 years they seem to favour the ground south south east of Whitby. One time a freind was fishing nets off shore when several of these boats turned up and started fishing all around and over his nets and as usual with the French skippers they were reluctant to comunicate so he was resigned to looseing his nets but on hauling he found no damage, we can only asume that the trawl nets were being towed off bottom catching the whiting as they come up in the water at dusk. I think the AIS system is creating several arm chair would be fishery officers, good system though I've had it fitted and find invaluable when steaming or working in busy shipping lanes like we have here , turn it off while fishing though. .

Hello Paul The French fleet (all two of them at the moment) are fishing for whiting of which they have a large North Sea quota, they have a relatively small North Sea cod quota and are monitored closely. I see that gard duty is still keeping the Whitby fleet afloat. That only leaves the seals and the French for you to moan about.

Hello Sportsman I am envious of your time on the river's of Scotland ,though you were only talking to anglers and anglers opinions are much the same all over, if your best mate had been a commercial fisherman and you had spent time fishing and sitting in huts mending nets talking with other salmon netters, also professionals, about the numbers of fish being caught the out look would have been very different, probably remembering good and bad times while resigning to the fact that it is the way fishing goes and has done since man learnt to fish and that anglers, ghillies and their bosses don't know what they are talking about, I suppose commercial opinions are also the same all over. How many are recaptures as this would distort the numbers of salmon claimed to be in the river? Is there any data showing the total numbers of salmon on the spawning grounds of the Dee and what percent are fish that have been caught and released? Your link says it's the best fishing for thirty years, I doubt thirty years ago there was much C&R and at the same time a thriving commercial fishery, can you see my point? I have no problem with C&R I practice it with out thought when course fishing and would happily fish the river Dee on the same bases, although I don't think it necessary for the survival of the salmon stocks in general. Sea fishing is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether ,

To busy living in the real world.

Somebody needs to bang ya bloody heads together. Either that or get married.

Hello Bob B.A.S.S would do better to look at that option and try to get other ifca's to do the same. I should imagine that B.A.S.S would have trouble getting the majority of the run of mill anglers to conform to a mls of 48 cm let alone commercial fishermen. The trouble with single species fanatics is they tend to be very narrow minded and lack any insight of the logistics of the bigger picture.

Hello Bob The MLS for bass is uniform at 36 cm. The Cornish IFCA can have a bylaw stating a MLS of 37.5 for their area which is only up to 6 miles from the shore,1.5 cm is not enough to make much difference and I suspect it suits the local fishermen's methods of fishing.Is there a minimum gill net mesh size bylaw? But if a fisherman says he caught fish 36cm outside of 6 miles it would be hard to prove otherwise, in this area where I fish bass are caught anywhere up to 30 miles from shore. B.A.S.S failed miserably last time and I suspect will again, the arguments for and against have all been done before .

Hello Bob The MLS for bass is 36 cm = 14 3/16 which normaly relates to a fish of 1 1/4 LB.

If you read it carefully Barry you will see that it is a case of being seen to do something but actually doing nothing or at most very little, probably designed to appease the green lobby.

Hello Barry What are you blaming the management for? Are there fewer fish in the sea? have catches constantly gone down since the nineties? Have they used taxpayer's money to build up the fleet? I not so sure she's being very truthful here, in fact I think she is as mad as a sack full of cats. But then so was Hitler and look how many followed him.

Well Barry according to the comments at the bottom of the link we are both in denial of the facts , or perhaps like Mike Park says we are just out to get what we can from a diminishing stock.

Has the Uk cod collapsed then ?? I hadn't noticed.

Hello Barry It was a bonito and there have been reports of a few other catches since. I've just looked through my latest monthly licence variation, which tells me what not or what and how much I'm allowed to catch each month and there it says no blue fin tuna from all areas. I wonder how the no dicard plan would cope if tuna did suddenly turn up in numbers.

The woman is as mad as a sack of cats!

The problem is though Worms, 99.9% of anglers I meet agree with him.

Hello Clive In the fishery management industry I include Defra,mmo, ifca’s, scientists, ngo’s who have all got fulltime marine lobbyists ,Natural England and all the mpa circus and then there is the navy protection ships air borne surveillance with a helicopter now in service on the Kent coast, that’s just the UK you add on all the departments with in the EU commission, you lump the annual turnover of that lot it would amount to a shed load of money and the personnel involved would out number fishermen. I haven't had much chance to get out on the bike much lately due to a busy couple of months fishing, I've got tickets for the F1 racing at the Spa racetrack which is in the Ardennes region of Belgium later in the summer so that’s a boys (not one of us is under 50 years old) ride out to look forward to.

Hello Flapper I suspect at the time when Clive was helping to develop better fishing gear we were not part of the EU and had a thriving fishing industry and there was no such thing as black fish. I agree with every thing Clive says except the bit about being less fish than 20 years ago, based on my own experience. The fishery management industry is huge, much bigger and more lucrative than the fishing industry, it mainly survives on depleted fish stocks and that is the state of fear it has created to justify it's work load, the last thing it needs is a healthy fish stock, it is also on the look out for any opportunity to increase the work load, take the discard issue for instance they will milk that for all they can get and the same will go for the management of rsa.

You will have to think of somethig better than that to stop the management industry Barry.