Mullet Seined netted in Cornwall

[Steve Coppolo]

The amounts claimed in there were less thn a third of the figures given here, 4 tons and there was some link to a blog site of March 2010 and I'm guessing that the poster in this topic and in WSF is the same person given some of the same language and rethoric who has a stated aim of bring down any and all commercial fishing in the UK aand really thats what I think the top and bottom of this topic is, a not very subtle loaded topic with an ulteria aim

 

I suspect the same, Brian, although the WSF character denied this. If it isn't the same person using two different names, given the similarities and the uncanny timing, it would appear to be a coordinated effort from the National Mullet Club, or something like it.

Edited December 27, 2010 by Steve Coppolo

[Brian Carragher]

76Jerry on here is Nick Sunny on WSF

[wurzel]

Point taken all be it a bit of a weak one

 

It seems that the tread has moved on a bit since I started writing this but as its took me all bloody evening to write I’m still going to post it .

 

Surprised it hasn't been moved by now.

 

 

It seems to me with this thread (argument) every body is right just some are more right than others, as there are with angling commercial fishing has so many variants and different scenarios it's hard to say one thing as definite fact.

I'll start with the original topic of this thread which was the seine net catches of mullet.

What I have read not from experience this is a beach seine owned not by one person but the community and I should imagine in many years past the catch was shared out amongst the community for food, these days the catch is sold on the market and the proceeds shared probably as has been stated resulting in enough each to have a free night in the pub as mullet have never been a high value fish and these days fetch not much more than they did when I first started fishing 30 odd years ago.

From what I gather the mullet shoals are spotted from the top of a near by headland or cliff and once a shoal is spotted with in range of the net every body is alerted and the net is rowed out or perhaps these days motored out from a small shallow draft boat feeding the net out and around in a large circle coming back to the beach at the starting point and then heaved in by hand by several people drawing the net back and closing it like purse to the beach, the only experience I've had at this is helping out to net a lake for a local fishing club, on a smaller scale but the principle was the same, resulting in the catch ending up in a small circle of net in the shallows close to the shore to be dipped out with handheld landing nets.

No doubt if every thing goes exactly to plan and it rarely does in my experience a large haul of fish can be caught and with a large shoal of mature mullet several tons could be caught in one go. I don't hear of many catches so perhaps these modern times there is not a spotter on watch all the time and not every shoal that enters the bay are fished for, even if they were the conditions would have to be spot on not only to spot the fish but to deploy the net successfully, so doubt this would happen very often through out the winter months. I don't know how many seine nets of this type are used around the cove communities of Cornwall, I doubt there are many.

 

Now the dreaded gill nets , my experience is of the Thames Estuary and mainly the Northern side around Harwich with the Stour And Orewell estuaries. As was stated during the 80's there were large amounts of mullet and my local estuaries were the same, I'm not sure whether this was due to not being fished for or a result of some very successful spawning year classes probably a mixture of both We were experiencing the same with the bass, mainly due to the massive 76 year class and I think mullet are very similar in age structure being slow growing but capable of producing large amounts of eggs and that they return to the same haunts every summer.

As happens were there are fish you will find fishermen who have devised a way of catching them and catch them they did.

I did try, twice I ventured up the river to have a go at the mullet both times when it was a bit blowy to get offshore and both times failed miserably, my nets were rigged with larger meshes and for strong tides and deeper water, we only succeeded in rolling up and filling with shore crabs, clumps of slipper limpets, funny looking squirty polyps of some kind and several types of sea weed resulting in a day and a half of sorting out , I remember we caught one mullet and a few flounders each time and on the second time I told the crew that if I even mentioned the very idea of giving it another go they had my permission to throw me over the side. I didn't think it was worth my while investing in the nets needed for the job and left it to the few that had done so. There is no doubt that they did make a dent in the local mullet population even as Steve says they are not always the easiest fish to catch, and the shoals became fewer and smaller although there never seemed to be a lack of mullet in any of the local marina's I suspect this is due to being safe from the nets and returning to that same safe haven each summer and of coarse there are hundreds of safe havens of one sort or another around the country saving the mullet from what could be called over fishing. As what usually happens, after a while the fishing slackens off and where there was a living for several reduces down to a livening for one or two especially with a species slow growing like mullet and with a gap in the good spawning year classes they don't replenish as quick as some species, again like bass .

Mullet have recovered fairly well, probably not to the levels of before gill nets but getting there , this is due I think to the milder winters and good summers of the last 20 years, not including the last two or three of coarse, resulting in good spawning years plus there has not been the increase in fishermen fishing for them as happened during the 80's, in this area there are only one or two that some times target the mullet along with a few part time hobby fishermen none in any serious way partly due to the price of mullet that has not increased with inflation, less so than other fish and also in the last 15 years or so there has been a noticeable decline in the amount of boats fishing in the area and I mean the whole area not just the estuaries and of all types of fishing and I believe this to be the case all round the UK.

So I believe mullet are safe from extinction for the fore see able future as are all species and have always been so .

 

 

To try and work out what is the deadliest method of fishing is impossible , they are all good at some point none are good all the time not in the same areas at least resulting in bigger boats changing areas and smaller local boats changing methods and species as the seasons change much the same as anglers do.

Angling can as Barry pointed out with the Portland Race have an effect on local stocks.

Gill nets seem to get more of a mention by anglers than any other form of fishing , probably because they are more widely used by inshore fishermen with in the range of anglers and of cause the misconception that they are some impenetrable wall of death that catches every thing that moves .

Also I think and have proved locally in the past most markers that anglers think are gill nets are in fact lobster or whelk pots even on the wrecks in this area out to 20 miles or more I’ve heard anglers moaning that the wrecks they wanted to fish on were covered in nets when I know for a fact they are pots .

 

At the end of the day it’s of no use denying that if there were no commercial fishermen there would be more fish in the sea for anglers to catch , of cause there would be, but I recon that in a lot of cases anglers would be surprised how little the difference would be and stocks would still fluctuate by large amounts .

 

The case of the spur dogs that Bob mentioned , he is right in saying they were hit hard with gill nets with boats from the south west sussing out a way of locating and catching large quantities . In my mind one example of fishermen at their worst , landing very large quantities of poor quality fish, I doubt or hope it would ever be allowed again. It coincided with our catches of dogs migrating up the channel and into the north sea tailing off and at the time got the blame for it, no doubt it had some effect but now I don’t think it was the full story .

In the last couple of years spur dogs have suddenly made quite a come back here and the same seems to have happened on the west coast these fish are large adults with the bitches well into double figures, so if we believe the boffins that tell us they are very slow growing, slow to mature and all that making a double figure fish nigh on 20 years old , so what I want to know is where the hell have they been hiding for the last 20 years ? Grand Banks perhaps? Any other ideas?

[barry luxton]

Superb post Wurzel, thank,s for it. What this crew are doing down the south west is the same method that was carried out since fishing began with regards also to the herring. Not because i'm old but what is documented. Again, this mullet method has been reported year on year and appears to be sustainable. I mentioned the bass line caught in the race as that is the only method due to ground conditions and the vicious tides. So both anglers and commercial use the same method. I have admiration for the commercial guys who use this method as it is their living and i know that obviously they are very good at it. As and when anglers get the opportunity to fish the area, it is very difficult fishing and any catches are a bonus. I have been on the large charter cats and see a wall of water come up over the sides, good fun as far as i.m concerned, when the unwary get caught out.

 

I don't have a clue why these mullet show off the cornish coast at this time of the year and can only assume they are shoaling up to play mothers and fathers or just trying to find warmer waters for the winter? Like many other shoals of different fish. This is where i have grave concern regarding the value of closing down static areas and calling them mcz's, an expensive and wasteful pointless management exercise as far as i'm concerned, i would like to see some come up with justification why we should be carrying on with this and not because of diktats from the worthless E U.

Edited December 28, 2010 by barry luxton

[Steve Coppolo]

It seems that the tread has moved on a bit since I started writing this but as its took me all bloody evening to write I’m still going to post it .

 

Surprised it hasn't been moved by now.

 

 

It seems to me with this thread (argument) every body is right just some are more right than others, as there are with angling commercial fishing has so many variants and different scenarios it's hard to say one thing as definite fact.

I'll start with the original topic of this thread which was the seine net catches of mullet.

What I have read not from experience this is a beach seine owned not by one person but the community and I should imagine in many years past the catch was shared out amongst the community for food, these days the catch is sold on the market and the proceeds shared probably as has been stated resulting in enough each to have a free night in the pub as mullet have never been a high value fish and these days fetch not much more than they did when I first started fishing 30 odd years ago.

From what I gather the mullet shoals are spotted from the top of a near by headland or cliff and once a shoal is spotted with in range of the net every body is alerted and the net is rowed out or perhaps these days motored out from a small shallow draft boat feeding the net out and around in a large circle coming back to the beach at the starting point and then heaved in by hand by several people drawing the net back and closing it like purse to the beach, the only experience I've had at this is helping out to net a lake for a local fishing club, on a smaller scale but the principle was the same, resulting in the catch ending up in a small circle of net in the shallows close to the shore to be dipped out with handheld landing nets.

No doubt if every thing goes exactly to plan and it rarely does in my experience a large haul of fish can be caught and with a large shoal of mature mullet several tons could be caught in one go. I don't hear of many catches so perhaps these modern times there is not a spotter on watch all the time and not every shoal that enters the bay are fished for, even if they were the conditions would have to be spot on not only to spot the fish but to deploy the net successfully, so doubt this would happen very often through out the winter months. I don't know how many seine nets of this type are used around the cove communities of Cornwall, I doubt there are many.

 

Now the dreaded gill nets , my experience is of the Thames Estuary and mainly the Northern side around Harwich with the Stour And Orewell estuaries. As was stated during the 80's there were large amounts of mullet and my local estuaries were the same, I'm not sure whether this was due to not being fished for or a result of some very successful spawning year classes probably a mixture of both We were experiencing the same with the bass, mainly due to the massive 76 year class and I think mullet are very similar in age structure being slow growing but capable of producing large amounts of eggs and that they return to the same haunts every summer.

As happens were there are fish you will find fishermen who have devised a way of catching them and catch them they did.

I did try, twice I ventured up the river to have a go at the mullet both times when it was a bit blowy to get offshore and both times failed miserably, my nets were rigged with larger meshes and for strong tides and deeper water, we only succeeded in rolling up and filling with shore crabs, clumps of slipper limpets, funny looking squirty polyps of some kind and several types of sea weed resulting in a day and a half of sorting out , I remember we caught one mullet and a few flounders each time and on the second time I told the crew that if I even mentioned the very idea of giving it another go they had my permission to throw me over the side. I didn't think it was worth my while investing in the nets needed for the job and left it to the few that had done so. There is no doubt that they did make a dent in the local mullet population even as Steve says they are not always the easiest fish to catch, and the shoals became fewer and smaller although there never seemed to be a lack of mullet in any of the local marina's I suspect this is due to being safe from the nets and returning to that same safe haven each summer and of coarse there are hundreds of safe havens of one sort or another around the country saving the mullet from what could be called over fishing. As what usually happens, after a while the fishing slackens off and where there was a living for several reduces down to a livening for one or two especially with a species slow growing like mullet and with a gap in the good spawning year classes they don't replenish as quick as some species, again like bass .

Mullet have recovered fairly well, probably not to the levels of before gill nets but getting there , this is due I think to the milder winters and good summers of the last 20 years, not including the last two or three of coarse, resulting in good spawning years plus there has not been the increase in fishermen fishing for them as happened during the 80's, in this area there are only one or two that some times target the mullet along with a few part time hobby fishermen none in any serious way partly due to the price of mullet that has not increased with inflation, less so than other fish and also in the last 15 years or so there has been a noticeable decline in the amount of boats fishing in the area and I mean the whole area not just the estuaries and of all types of fishing and I believe this to be the case all round the UK.

So I believe mullet are safe from extinction for the fore see able future as are all species and have always been so .

 

 

To try and work out what is the deadliest method of fishing is impossible , they are all good at some point none are good all the time not in the same areas at least resulting in bigger boats changing areas and smaller local boats changing methods and species as the seasons change much the same as anglers do.

Angling can as Barry pointed out with the Portland Race have an effect on local stocks.

Gill nets seem to get more of a mention by anglers than any other form of fishing , probably because they are more widely used by inshore fishermen with in the range of anglers and of cause the misconception that they are some impenetrable wall of death that catches every thing that moves .

Also I think and have proved locally in the past most markers that anglers think are gill nets are in fact lobster or whelk pots even on the wrecks in this area out to 20 miles or more I’ve heard anglers moaning that the wrecks they wanted to fish on were covered in nets when I know for a fact they are pots .

 

At the end of the day it’s of no use denying that if there were no commercial fishermen there would be more fish in the sea for anglers to catch , of cause there would be, but I recon that in a lot of cases anglers would be surprised how little the difference would be and stocks would still fluctuate by large amounts .

 

The case of the spur dogs that Bob mentioned , he is right in saying they were hit hard with gill nets with boats from the south west sussing out a way of locating and catching large quantities . In my mind one example of fishermen at their worst , landing very large quantities of poor quality fish, I doubt or hope it would ever be allowed again. It coincided with our catches of dogs migrating up the channel and into the north sea tailing off and at the time got the blame for it, no doubt it had some effect but now I don’t think it was the full story .

In the last couple of years spur dogs have suddenly made quite a come back here and the same seems to have happened on the west coast these fish are large adults with the bitches well into double figures, so if we believe the boffins that tell us they are very slow growing, slow to mature and all that making a double figure fish nigh on 20 years old , so what I want to know is where the hell have they been hiding for the last 20 years ? Grand Banks perhaps? Any other ideas?

 

Top post, Wurzel. Good question about the Spurs, too. Far too often people think if they can't see the fish, there aren't any.

[Bob Shotter]

I to would like to thank Wurzel for a quality post.

 

So should we conclude that there are netting methods that have little impact and others that do have a very significant impact?

 

Being an RSA rep on one of the governing authorities it would therefore be of use to know which are which, I have my ideas on the subject but would love to have yours and as that question would be off topic could you per chance answer here>>>> http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/Time-Pa...85#entry3554985

 

TL Bob

[Steve Coppolo]

I to would like to thank Wurzel for a quality post.

 

So should we conclude that there are netting methods that have little impact and others that do have a very significant impact?

 

Being an RSA rep on one of the governing authorities it would therefore be of use to know which are which, I have my ideas on the subject but would love to have yours and as that question would be off topic could you per chance answer here>>>> http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/forums/Time-Pa...85#entry3554985

 

TL Bob

 

Bob, you've just read Wurzels comment that every method is effective sometimes but no method is good all the time, yet you still seem to want to put things in little boxes. Why?

 

What is your objective, Bob? What are you trying to achieve? Are you looking for a crusade to join, or start? If you want to represent sea anglers by defending us against Eco mentalists and busy bodies, fine, but if you're trying to interfere with or 'improve' (ruin) sea angling, go and get a place on the angling trust conservation mob and save yourself a lot of trouble.

 

Sea anglers have enough problems on the horizon, without someone trying to create more.

[76jerry]

First things first, I repersent no organisations I am just a passionate angler who vurtially only fishes for Mullet and has done for the last twenty years okay this doesn't make me an expert but I'm no fool either and can only go on what I see and hear. I have got some of my info from the N M C forum which is not difficult for anyone interested in Mullet . Why do Mullet go down the channel to Cornwall? Water temp.It is a couple of degrees warmer. Seined netting goes on all winter and from various locations throughtout Cornwall probaly the most infamous is the Sennen one were they come to blows with the men of Parr the next village in years past but in the last twenty years Mullet no longer over winter in Alderney in the vast numbers.

 

Most on this forum seem to be suggesting that it's okay to net as many Mullet as anyone likes as long as we don't have any form of catch and release as this will be the death of Seafishing this is one of the main reasons I gave up fishing for a club could not stand the waste after a weigh in, what the hell do you do with 30 lb of Wrasse ? As long as you can fill your freezer every thing is rosy in the garden. I am now seeing Mullet in my local fishmongers and market stalls which didn't happen a few years ago and there are no quotas for Mullet so nobody has any idea if the stocks are being damaged by netting which includes gill netting and trawling for Bass in the channel. I am getting tired off all the comerical boys saying the Mullet have PHD in escaping netts what ****s.

 

Blue Fin Tuna are close to extinction and will probably be the first fish to be fished to extincion what will all the fishing fleets fish for next? it wasn't that whaling nearly brought about the extinction of whales if we don't start now to protect our fishes it might be already too late man's greed knows no limits .

I am ashamed to call my self an Angler sometimes with litter and this we don,t care attidtude.

Edited January 1, 2011 by 76jerry

[barry luxton]

First things first, I repersent no organisations I am just a passionate angler who vurtially only fishes for Mullet and has done for the last twenty years okay this doesn't make me an expert but I'm no fool either and can only go on what I see and hear. I have got some of my info from the N M C forum which is not difficult for anyone interested in Mullet . Why do Mullet go down the channel to Cornwall? Water temp.It is a couple of degrees warmer. Seined netting goes on all winter and from various locations throughtout Cornwall probaly the most infamous is the Sennen one were they come to blows with the men of Parr the next village in years past but in the last twenty years Mullet no longer over winter in Alderney in the vast numbers.

 

Most on this forum seem to be suggesting that it's okay to net as many Mullet as anyone likes as long as we don't have any form of catch and release as this will be the death of Seafishing this is one of the main reasons I gave up fishing for a club could not stand the waste after a weigh in, what the hell do you do with 30 lb of Wrasse ? As long as you can fill your freezer every thing is rosy in the garden. I am now seeing Mullet in my local fishmongers and market stalls which didn't happen a few years ago and there are no quotas for Mullet so nobody has any idea if the stocks are being damaged by netting which includes gill netting and trawling for Bass in the channel. I am getting tired off all the comerical boys saying the Mullet have PHD in escaping netts what ****s.

 

Blue Fin Tuna are close to extinction and will probably be the first fish to be fished to extincion what will all the fishing fleets fish for next? it wasn't that whaling nearly brought about the extinction of whales if we don't start now to protect our fishes it might be already too late man's greed knows no limits .

I am ashamed to call my self an Angler sometimes with litter and this we don,t care attidtude.

 

I suggest it's you are missing the point jerry, no disrespects. I believe it was the nmc along with others including members of the trust who brought in the worthless ban at chrischurch harbour. Does that sit well with you, however the free and unrestricted mullet fishing at weymouth certainly counters that argument. You appear to have an absolute hatred of any commercial fishing for the mullet, yet to fish off the beaches with a seine net must be the most conservation minded and sustainable fishing that was ever invented. It is down to management to manage the stocks, so if they are struggling you may well like to take it up with defra and co to sort it out. To do that evidence of shortages will need to be found. To decide if to take a fish or not should be in the hands of the angler, no one should criticize the angler if he takes it or sets it free. So yet again we have another worthless ban on the rsa, tope take, the eel take. That was another example of worthless legislation and the likes of the trust will never back the angler up on that one, more's the pity. If all you are keen on is catch and release, then perhaps you can start your own forum up and see how much interest it would hold.

 

As long as the fish on the fish mongers slab are fresh and look as if they have been caught in the last day or two, then good for them and good for the public, however what i see is ruddy pre frozen rubbish and it turns me off just looking at it. As i have said there are problems with commercial fishing management but the type of fishing you are concerned with is the least of the problems. Tell me what happend to the alderny mullet.

 

Litter, yes that's disgusting, if i do a rare trip rock fishing, i take a black bag with me, however here is a poster that a mate down the south west sent me, feel free to use it.

Edited January 1, 2011 by barry luxton

[ColinW]

76jerry, you are wasting your time. Most of the people responding to your post are commercial fishermen or people with a vested interest in fish box filling charter boats. Sustainable to them means they can make more than their fuel costs. The less fish there are the higher the price. The only time to panic is when there are no fish in the sea.

Edited January 3, 2011 by ColinW