Countryside Alliance and FACT in the dock.

[Peter Sharpe]

I think there is a deeply embedded hunting instinct within humans and angling is probably the most blameless way of satisfying it. Hunt saboteurs presumably exercise their own hunting instincts by hunting those who hunt, except their ultimate aim is rage and violence. Their instinct is far more primitive and uncivilised than that practised by most anglers.

 

I have to qualify this by saying that there are some people purporting to be anglers who in my opinion, shouldn't be let anywhere near places where wildlife exists, except possibly among the rats on a rubbish tip.

 

Luckily, it is still probably true to say that most anglers came into the art for their genuine interest in the natural world and the irresistable urge to be beside the water. Hopefully, those participants who see angling as some kind of glorified computer game that takes place in the open air will be participants for only the briefest of time.

[Paul Boote]

Jaffa:

Translation?

The 'hard of thinking' and the suddenly, strategically, apparently (politically) disingenuous ALWAYS want a translation. YOU, jaffa, clearly understood: that's why you replied so quickly.

 

[ 26. March 2005, 11:46 PM: Message edited by: Paul Boote ]

[Leon Roskilly]

Jaffa:

Translation?

Going out on a limb here!

 

I, and a shipmate (an angler too) once stood on the moonlit bank of the River Plate, fishing for salmon with Manuel, an engine driver who lived in Rosario, in one room with his wife and three kids.

 

We didn't catch a salmon, but had a few big cat fish.

 

Manuel didn't speak any English, nor we Spanish, but we got by.

 

We were anglers

 

We were invited back to Manuel's house where we ate cheap food (barbecued steak - It was Argentina!), met his wife and kids, and the girls next door and talked about Elvis in sign language

 

Just blokes who enjoyed fishing and all that entails; knowing the currents, and the seasons, the cycle of life that feeds the fish and the baits you must use, predation, spawning and eveything that lives in the river.

 

And then they came.

 

Famously those who know the price but not the value.

 

Trophy hunters.

 

Does Manuel still fish the Plate?

 

Can he afford to do so?

 

And is the fishing just the same, or have those beauties now gone?

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 27. March 2005, 12:07 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Paul Boote]

Leon Roskilly:

 

Leon Roskilly:

Translation?

Going out on a limb here!

 

I, and a shipmate (an angler too) once stood on the moonlit bank of the River Plate, fishing for salmon with Manuel, an engine driver who lived in Santos in one room with his wife and three kids.

 

We didn't catch a salmon, but had a few big cat fish.

 

Manuel didn't speak any English, nor we Spanish, but we got by.

 

We were anglers

 

We were invited back to Manuel's house where we ate cheap food (barbecued steak - It was Brazil!), met his wife and kids, and the girls next door and talked about Elvis in sign language

 

Just blokes who enjoyed fishing and all that entails; knowing the currents, and the seasons, the cycle of life that feeds the fish and the baits you must use, predation, spawning and eveything that lives in the river.

 

And then they came.

 

Famously those who know the price but not the value.

 

Trophy hunters.

 

Does Manuel still fish the Plate?

 

Can he afford to do so?

 

And is the fishing just the same, or have those beauties now gone?

 

Tight Lines - leon

Definitely. I can relate to THAT.

[slodger]

Thank god I don't have a clue what you're talking about. Ignorance is bliss I guess. Luckily for the rest of us, there's no duty of Plato like intelligence required of anglers, just the willingness to interact with our surroundings. When you come down from your 'self percieved' higher astral plane, you'll find you still have to face the same moral questions as the rest of us.

 

You can't hide behind your Mensa scorecard you know. You're hunters, just the same as the rest of us mere mortals.

 

Jeez....what a pile of cr@p!

[Newt]

6 pages and gotta close the thread.