ColinW

In a week when the owners of one of Scotland's biggest trawlers are fined £950,000 for illegal landings ("tip of the iceberg" according to prosecutors) and a Russian trawler is chased hundreds of miles before escaping back into Russian waters and avoiding inspection, yes, I do believe it!

It's always nice to hear the views of commercial guys. Arnold Locker, joint owner of Lockers Trawlers is quoted in the paper as saying that these fish will be ready to catch next March or April. Well if they are 0-12 months old now, I reckon that means they will be 5-17 months old when he reckons they're ready to harvest. Very forward thinking!

"Butcher one some day" Fat chance I'll ever be able to do that I didn't mean to patronise, it wasn't a biology lesson, just a statement of fact. To me, the similarity to mako shows how animals that spend millions of years adapting to a certain lifestyle end up coming to the same solutions even though they start from completely different roots doesn't it. Ever see a picture of a Tasmanian wolf? It was a marsupial with a pouch like a kangaroo, but it looked for all the world like a dog. Proof of evolution if ever it was needed

quote: Originally posted by BoatsMiami.com Yacht Sales: They both fall into the billfish category, but the swordfish is also a distant cousin to sharks as well. Swordfish is a member of the class osteichthyes (bony fish) while sharks are in the class chondrichthyes (cartilagenous fish) which means they would have to be VERY distant cousins indeed

Mike, I'm supposed to start teaching that stuff in a fortnight and my cribsheet just happened to be on screen when I saw this post, don't want you to think I actually typed all that crap just out for this!

You are right about one thing though wurzel, I am bitter. And the more I read about commercial fishing the more bitter I get. Google the word "canyonbuster". Is it any wonder there's nothing left in the sea but scraps.

And you say I'M twisted! One minute the cod are disappearing because the sea is getting warmer, the next minute the bass aren't growing fast enough for you because it's too cold.

If your head is bursting from them don't do a computer networking course! ADSL asymmetric digital subscriber line AM amplitude modulation AMPS advanced mobile phone system ANS advanced networks and services ANSI American national standards institute ARPA advanced research projects agency ATM asynchronous transfer mode CCITT comite consultatif international telegraphique et telephonique CDMA code division multiple access CSMA carrier sense multiple access CSMA/CD CSMA with collision detection D-AMPS digital advanced mobile phone system (U.S.) DNS domain name system DSLAM digital subscriber line access multiplexer FDD frequency division duplexing FDM frequency division multiplexing FM frequency modulation FTP file transfer protocol GPS global positioning system GPRS general packet radio service GSM global system for mobile communications (except U.S.) HTTP hypertext transfer protocol IP internet protocol ISM industrial scientific medical (frequency bands) ISP internet service provider ITU international telecommunications union ITU-R ITU radiocommunications ITU-T ITU standardization ITU-D ITU development ISO international standards organisation KB 1024 bytes kbps 1000 bits per second LAN local area network LLC logical link control LMDS local multipoint distribution service MAC medium access control MAN metropolitan area network MB 1048576 bytes mbps 1000000 bits per second MMDS multichannel multipoint distribution service MTSO mobile telephone switching office NAP network access point NAT network address translation NID network interface device NSF national science foundation OSI open systems interconnection PCM pulse code modulation PDA personal digital assistant POP point of presence POTS plain old telephone service PPP point to point protocol PSTN public switched telephone network QAM quadrature amplitude modulation QPSK quadrature phase shift keying SMTP simple mail transfer protocol SNA systems network architecture (IBM) TCP transmission control protocol TDM time division multiplexing UDP user datagram protocol USB universal serial bus UTP unshielded twisted pair WAN wide area network WAP wireless applications protocol WCDMA wideband CDMA WLL wireless local loop WWW world wide web and I'm only on the third chapter of the text book!!

I just paint the top foot of my rods white. I like starlites on floats for freshwater fishing but when I'm sea fishing I prefer to use a headlamp or a lantern. (Maybe that's why I've never caught a sole?)

The key word in stavey's post is "significant". If they have any value at all, even if it's only a couple of quid a box as pot bait, then commercial fishermen will kill them. The fact that they are a valuable resource for anglers is completely irrelevant. They have as much concern for us as the smackheads who steal your £100 car stereo to sell it for a fiver to buy drugs.

I make no apologies for going on about cod. Cod were what made it worth going fishing in the winter. There is no debate about why they aren't there any more. They aren't there because of overfishing. Not because of temperature change, not because of seals, not because of us anglers, just overfishing by commercial fishermen. I don't know which of your obscene practices in particular has caused the damage, emptying the sea of sandeels, wrecking the seabed by dragging six ton weights across it, netting all the spawning fish or dumping tons of dead codling back into the sea; but what I do know is that it IS YOUR FAULT.

I have written to various fisheries ministers over the years. To be fair to them I have always, eventually, received a reply. The key word is "eventually". That is the problem. Usually by the time the letter works it way through the system and back, the person I wrote to isn't even in the job anymore. That means that fisheries ministers never need look more than a couple of years ahead, knowing that they will soon have the poisoned chalice taken off them and they can get on with their careers. They don't want to be remembered as "the man who closed the fishing industry" ever connected in the public's mind with newsreels of some Scottish fishwife throwing cod carcasses at them! The result is that nothing effective is ever, nor will ever be done.

Glad to see wurzel's comments back to their usual standard. Our evidence is simple. We don't catch any fish any more! If the sea was full of fish as you claim then, just like in the old days, we would be able to catch them off the beaches. I don't care if you can still find cod using your side scan sonars, GPS systems etc. Trawlermen found them in record numbers like that off Newfoundland. The scientists said they were dissappearing, the trawlermen said "We are catching plenty, we don't need scientists telling us what is out there". They aren't catching plenty now, are they? How is it possible to empty the fish of sea? Well it turns out it's pretty bloody simple. You let greedy bastard trawlermen wreak an environmental disaster on it for their own short term gain.

The only thing that will come out of all this as far as anglers are concerned is a sea fishing rod license. We won't see any change to commercial practices. We won't see any improvement in stock levels. All we will see are jobsworths asking to see our licenses, to finance their own and their bosses jobs. Read this document and it becomes quite clear that they regard us as a "cash cow" because they have got it into their heads that we are happy to spend £58 a day on our sport (their figure) so we can easily be taken for £22 a year! http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/...onsultation.pdf It is quite clear that they regard it as easier to charge us than to charge commercial fishermen. For one thing there would be uproar if English commercial fishermen were charged and not other EU boats, so guess who they see as the soft target. As the document says, it only needs an RRO, it doesn't even need to go through parliament or any other such inconvenience.

Just to give an idea of how much is taken from the North Sea. In a year the Danes are reckoned to take between 8 and 20 billion sandeels. Call it 10 to make the sums easy and assume the sandeels are 4" long. Laid end to end those sandeels would encircle the earth TWENTY FIVE times!

Unfortunately a lot of the damage is done by industrial fishing. It's unlikely that the average housewife is going to know, or even believe if they are told, that their Danish bacon has been fed mainly on sandeels and whatever else gets pumped into the mincing machines with them. And of course as Homer Simpson pointed out it is amazing how many other products in your average shopping trolley come from this "wonderful, magical animal".

The first thing I do when I use mine is turn off the little fish pictures. It's a lot easier to believe an indication is noise or weed if the sounder isn't drawing a fish on the screen! The only time I have much faith that what I see on screen is an accurate picture is when I am trolling at a nice steady speed on a calm day. I'd say they are essential for boat fishing on big waters but ignore all the manufacturers hype!

I am stunned. I never thought Wurzel would ever say anything I agreed with! So if commercial fishermen and anglers alike think that fish should be allowed to spawn at least once, why the hell can't the rule makers see the blindingly obvious?

If these nets are so selective, how come dolphins drown in them? I don't think I will live to see a bass as big as a dolphin!

I think one reason electrofishing isn't used in the sea is because the conductivity of seawater is so much higher than freshwater. This means that to generate a sizeable electric field across the length of a fish in order to stun (or kill) it requires a very large amount of power because of the high current flow. Another reason of course is that when the fish floated up the seagulls would eat them all!

If you look in this excerpt from Mrs Beeton's famous cookbook http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/b/bee...//chapter8.html you will find near the end of the chapter a list of fish supplied in a year to the London market. Amongst these is Live cod (Average 10lb) 400,000 This book was first published in 1859, around the time the photo at the start of this thread was taken. If fishing that way results in an average size of 10lbs for cod, then I for one would be happy for it to be done!

I like to use a multiplier when plugging for pike but use a fixed spool to do it for bass. The reason for this is the combination of the lighter lures and the extra wind.

Probably the last time anyone did it! Does this look like the fish in your local market?

Just don't say anything that might upset the netters! Wouldn't want them feeling bad as they scrape my local estuary for flounders to sell as pot bait, would we? A club could fish matches every week of the year, catching and releasing those almost worthless fish. But no, it'll buy a couple of pints, so out they must come. I'm sorry if this seems a negative attitude but I am old enough to remember when I COULD catch proper sized cod off the shore and, whatever the apologists and excuse makers on here might say, the reason I can't catch them any more is ENTIRELY down to the trawlermen. There may be a raft of stupid rules for them to follow but at the end of the day it is them who shovel a pile of dead codling overboard and then shoot the net back in the same place knowing they'll catch a load more, as long as they get a few boxes of something they can sell.

with apologies to the two folks who responded to this non-contributory diatribe, I'm removing this remark and their responses in hopes that an important question can get some decent discussion. Pro, con, your choice but with some content please. Newt [ 28. September 2005, 05:04 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]