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ANGLING UNITY, IS IT POSSIBLE ?


Guest STEVE POPE

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Guest BUDGIE

In Germany a lot of angling administrators are old boys who still love angling but no longer feel the need to be out on the bank actually doing it so much.This system apears to work.As long as they keep in touch with the sport and are allrounders this could work in this country too.I would gladly pay for their services.As I have said before 10,000 individual anglers lobbying would carry more weight than a representitive organisation.Maybe the angling administrators prime task could be to co-ordinate the 10,000?

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Guest waterman1013

Hi guys

 

Sorry I've been busy and away from the net for a few weeks.

 

This is interesting SP, who leads one of the few single species organisations not to belong to SACG, wanting to know the views of other on unity in angling.

 

Angling will only survive with unity and one organisation. There are still some of us who fish all methods for all types of fish and don't see any difference between a barbel and a cod or between a large mouth bass and a salmon. If it swim it's worth fishing for.

 

RaY Walton apparently struck a sore point with Steve and we as yet still do not have a published answer to the question. From the little I knoe it seems that personalities are what is stopping unity moving forward and the sooner the prime donnas get off the shelf and act for angling the better. I have recently taken over as secretary of SACG and there are many good committed people involved in all sections of our sport. Unfortunately I see too many who seem to think they can padcle their own canoe and trip others up or seem intent on fighting old batttles.

 

We have anglers who do not live bait, denigrating it, we have anglers who can't see that angling is a blood sport and needs defending as such and as a baisc human right (i.e. to hunt), we have traditionalists who don't like modern methods and insist of saying so rather than just accepting that things change and new people find new ways. [i put myself in the traditionalist frame - there are things in modern fishing that I find abhorrant, so I don't use those methods, but neither do I in public slag off those that do. As long as our target species are not harmed does it really matter]

 

SACG is working with NASA, S&TA, ACA, NFA, NFSA and others to try to unify angling, the fact that some single specie groups stand outside this prospective organisation will not weeken our resolve or the acheivement when we get there. The Government is waiting for angling to move forward so that funding can be provided to encourage young anglers, organise training and teach-ins, and to promote the sport as a good way of life. They have a positive view of angling and want to promote it, especially in the inner cities.

 

It is up to all of us, regardless of our affiliations, to work together to achive that unity we so need.

 

Funding and structure will be the next big question.

 

Angling is one of the cheapest sports to follow, an annual licence for £19.00 (£20.00 next year) and a rod and reel. You don't even have to join a club. Yet all the time in the angling press we get moans about how expensive it all is. If anglers played golf instead they would all be paying in excess of £500.00 a year for their sport. With even £20.00 annual affiliation from each angler, coarse, game and sea, to a central body angling would be well funded to the tune of at least £20million a year. Funds like that would enable us to run the sort of PR campaigns we need to fight the antis, infulence parliament and support the European fight for better water quality and habitat for our target species. We would influence the formation of the EU Fisheries Policy, and might even manage to protect the few remaining stocks left in the North Sea. We would become the single largest environmental group in the UK with a huge amount of influence. We would be listened to and taken notice of.

 

What do we have at the moment, an NFA struggling to acheive the changes their leaders know are needed to enable them to lead the fight, some umbrella organisations struggling on a shoe string to represent specialist anglers, the S&TA, well funded, represneting game fishers and sea anglers going through changes in their leadership which may help move things forward. Frankly the mountain is huge, but we have to climb it. If we don't our children may never have the freedom or waters to fish in again and our generation will have failed.

 

So bury your differences, ignore the baggage we all carry, start talking and working together to acheive that unity we all need, forget the personalities and arguments over tactics or methods, defend angling, defend our waters, attack stupidity in public policy and join the fight for quality water, fish and the right to catch them.

 

Mike Heylin

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Guest STEVE POPE

Mike,

No doubt you are well aware of the current correspondence between our two organisations.

As I said earlier, a full account of our position will be published in Barbel Fisher No. 10 which is due out at the beginning of October.

What I would say however, bearing in mind your point regarding my reluctance to answer Ray's question, would you please ensure that the SACG answers the questions we have raised in our correspondence.

 

 

.

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Guest waterman1013

Steve

 

Talking is the only way forward, how about it Steve? (bickering in correspondence won't get us anywhere) Or do we all have to subscribe to the BS to get issue number 10 and a statement of the BS position.

 

Oh and by the way the "minutes" the BS complained of were a draft for approval. My transcription was altered at the SACG meeting as I had the quotes wrong on the draft, so don't you think it is time we addressed the real questions instead of getting prammy with each other. E-mail me at waterman1013@hotmail.com and we can get together and see if we can't resolve some of the history and move forward.

 

As far as I am concerned what is gone is in the past and the future is much more important. However you did raise this whole thread and to avoid a direct question from another writer I think many of us find strange. I honestly do not see what the problem for you is, but then I don't know anything about the internal working of the BS and wouldn't pretend to.

 

Write me with some dates and we'll try and get it together.

 

Mike

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Guest Alan Pearce

Well said Mike in my capacity as SACG Chairman I wrote a few days ago to Steve Pope and Mike Burdon of the Barbel Society offering such a meeting. Their responses said nothing about excepting this only a threat to sue the SACG for so called slanderouse accusations (in fact an opinion shared by many). If Steve wishes to come into the public arena, ask questions or make statements then he should, in that arena reply to them. Shame I've always had alot of time for him and seen him as a bright guy, perhaps its all those E numbers absorbed from the luncheon meat or the moon phase. No doubt we will hear and the BS stuff be published on this site for all to see and digest. Come on Steve this is the fifth olive branch we have held out to you in the past two years or so, its getting tireing and there is much more important and essential work to be done, dont you think?

 

Listen you guys out there I'm really glad I logged on to this and found a lot of what you have to say very interesting and thought provoking. Why don't you now take the next step and get a little bit more involved. You have proven your abillities through these pages, take a little step further please. Unity within all the variouse angling representative bodies is happening, believe it. Only yesterday I attended a meeting with ALL anglings governing bodies Coarse, Sea, Game, Conservation and Consultatives the lot. Everyone is getting on well and things are moving forwards. We all talked, laughed, ate lunch and drank wine together, more importantly we planned together a better and brighter future for our sport. Sure at times it gets a bit long winded, bumpy and heavy going, but we are all big boys now with a job to do and WE WILL DO IT. As an example apart from my work with the SACG I also head up the Proffessional Anglers Association and look after over a 100 angling coaches. Ken Ball from the NFA does like wise with his 100 coaches sure we are in some ways in competion to each other, each believing we do the better job. But note I said competion and NOT confrontation, sure we dig at each other behind our backs, but also face to face. If Ken has a problem he calls me and I do like wise, it works and so do our respective organisations. In fact I'm out tommorow in Norfolk fishing with forty kids, far too many for my coach and I to handle so I invited the local NFA coach along as well. It dosen't matter who does what it is for the benefit of angling that matters, the overall big picture. Unfortunatly there are still some small minded self appointed selfish people around in angling, my advice is don't waste too much time on them, get on with the more important issues, look at the bigger picture, others will see them for what they are and leave them alone in their little sand castles waiting for the tide to turn and wash them away.

Sorry to go on for so long, just get your fingers out get involved and it will all happen much faster with your help. And who knows you may enjoy it.

Before I go one last thing, what is your opiion of the Countryside Alliance? Should angling work along side them? Isn't angling just another field sport? Arn't we all hunters, sea and game anglers eat most of there catch. Important this as I need some opinions quickly, short versions please.

Finally any receips for roast barbel.

 

(sorry Steve,joke).

 

Best fishes, Alan Pearce

E-mail alan@paauk.com

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Guest Pete B

I suppose a direct question is needed.. Why is the BS not affiliated to the SACG? I've read all of the above and it seems to an outsider that the 'committee' mentality is getting in the way... you reply to my questions first... point of order...

Steve .. not much point in making a position clear in a closed circulation magazine is there...?

Happy fishing (whatever you fish for)

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