Fishing a ''blood sport''

[Guest 'eelfisher']

Dear Alan

Once again another reply from your keyboards with either no sensible intro so your words are taken in the wrong manner.....you sound like you believe we are blood thirsty people? or....you just like to jump in.???

Read again your words and try to see how they come across with another head on!!!

Not what I would have wanted to hear from a high ranking SAA man.

Yours With Respect.....

Steve.

PS...Remember, some of the posters here have not discussed this and other topics time and time again and need a gentler approach to answering their questions.

PPS...How are things going on the SAA front.....I know things have been happening but no magazine, no newsletter, no badge, no minutes of the last meeting.

[Guest trent.barbeler]

Fish Slyme,

 

A short but very true story;

 

When I first moved out into the countryside, my living was still being made within the city limits of Nottingham. I used to travel the 60 mile round trip every working day following the same route. So did others from my village working in Nottingham as well as those making shopping trips.

 

Very quickly, I became well known in and around my village for my long spells away from home during fishing trips. " I dont know how you put up with him", were popular comments to my wife Jo down in the village pub.

 

Anyway, along the main route into Nottingham from my village home is a iron type railway bridge that crosses the main road. Someone, unknown to either my wife or myself sprayed the following words on the bridges metal parapet wall in 2ft high letters.

 

"Lee, your dinner is on the table, love Jo"

 

Very quickly, this sprayed message was the talk of the village and in the village pub bar. Everyone assumed that Jo had put someone up for the spray job as either a joke or as a sarcastic poke at my fishing ways.

 

Oh how I played on that message. Many was the free pint I supped whilst telling the tale to those eager to listen and pay for my beer whilst doing so. On every occasion the tale grew longer and took on new twists. "No,no, you carry on, I'll get that one. What was it, a Guinness?.

 

Both Jo and myself did not have a clue about the real identity of who sprayed the message or who it was intended for.

 

The moral? Never believe what you read sprayed on bridges.

 

And Alan, you should know better by now.

[Guest Newt]

I'd always thought the term "blood sports" referred to activities where the blood and pain was the object - and not a "sport" to my mind.

 

Example is cock fighting where two male chickens with sharp spurs (often a steel knife slipped on over the natural spur) are put in a pit and fight until one or both are dead. Another is doing the same with dogs - put bulls and the like. Bull fighting as done in Spain/Mexico where the object is to weaken the animal with sharp objects until it is slowed enough for the matidore to kill it with a long knife at (usually) little risk to himself. In other parts of the world, there is a passtime where they put a cobra and a mongoose into a pit. Cobra dies every time. Then another snake with the mongoose and so on until the mongoose becomes tired and the cobra gets it.

 

All the above have in common that the only object is to have animals die in a spectacular and bloody fashion. No one makes use of the losers.

 

I absolutely would not class fishing or hunting (except possibly running a fox with dogs ?? ) in that category. When I fish, it is either C&R where I hope to put the fish back in good shape and have another chance at it later, or for food plus the fun of catching. Humane kill in that case. When I hunt, it is for meat. Again, a quick kill is the ideal.

[Guest ALAN FAWCETT]

I have never viewed our sport as a "blood" sport but i can understand non anglers seeing it as one for one simple reason.

 

In the weekly "comics" you will see many pictures of fish in the hands of their captors, The captor with his great big grin (or scowl as the in thing seems to be at the moment!) then you look at the fish horror theres the blood running down the fish's mouth!!

 

Yes take a picture to send to your favourite mag but make sure you wipe any sign of blood from the fish first please!

 

I know from some one who used to be an anti (till they discovered the anti's are against angling) that they cut these pictures out & use them as ammo for their own agenda

 

All i ask is you think before you say "cheese"

 

------------------

TROGG (Alan)

 

my sites here

[Guest Leon Roskilly]

It's interesting that some person/persons have taken the trouble to write 'Angling is a Blood Sport' on the bridge.

 

They didn't write 'Fox Hunting is a Blood Sport'!!

 

Why?

 

Because most people do regard fox hunting as a blood sport, so it isn't serving any purpose to write that.

 

In writing that 'Angling is a Blood Sport', the graffiti vandals are acknowledging that to most people Angling is not (yet) regarded as a blood sport, and that there is a propaganda battle stil to be fought.

 

Repeat the lie often enough.....

 

Thanks to the hard work of many, Angling (in all it's various forms)is at last beginning to be seen as both a substantial economic and political force. (The message seems to have been taken on board that Leisure and Tourism are the mainstays of the rural economy now, and angling tourism is huge!)

 

The many thousands of followers of blood sports would dearly love to have angling, with it's millions of practitioners, labelled a blood sport too.

 

It is not only the political manouverings of 'antis' who anglers should fear!!

 

And yes, there are a lot of people involved in blood sports who are also anglers.

 

In fighting for the right to continue with the pastimes and practices they love, I can't condemn them for fighting with every weapon which they can lay their hands on.

 

What we all have to choose from is one of the following arguments.

 

1. If hunting goes, fishing is next. Anglers should defend their sport by joining the defence of hunting.

 

2. If anglers join with hunters, we will surely be dragged down with them.

 

In an ideal world, hunting should defend hunting and leave angling out of it, and anglers should defend angling - but life is never that simple

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Guest Keith]

Originally posted by Alan Pearce:

So what about sea and game fishing where many of the fish caught are killed? There is no difference between killing a trout or a cod or shooting a duck or a grouse. As well as being conservationists anglers are hunters and trappers, the same applies to other field sports.

 

Alan.

 

Errmmm....

 

that'll be why we're all talking about coarse angling then...

 

As to being "hunters and trappers" - I don't know how you fish, but I neither "hunt" nor "trap" the fish I catch: I merely give them an option (my baited hook) - if they're even there in the first place - which they choose to take or not.

 

Neither hunting or trapping in any way whatsoever...

 

------------------

Keith

 

Blyth,

Northumberland

 

mailto:keith@go-fishing.co.ukkeith@go-fishing.co.uk

http://www.wacacnet.co.uk

[Guest Keith]

Originally posted by ALAN FAWCETT:

I have never viewed our sport as a "blood" sport but i can understand non anglers seeing it as one for one simple reason.

 

But Alan, I think you've hit the nail on the head here: most non anglers don't see angling as a blood sport!

 

I actually ask them - and it just ain't so. So for that reason alone, deliberately aligning ourselves with real blood sports is a mad idea.

 

Let's face it: the CA didn't do fox hunting any bloody good, did it?

 

As Leon suggests, the whole "angling as blood sport" concept is either:

 

1) a lie told by the "antis" which if repeated enough will gain a life of its own - especially if we react to it in the wrong way, or:

 

2) a lie told by the pro blood-sport lobby as a way of "pressuring" us into siding with them, in the mistaken belief that our salvation lies with them.

 

Which is utter *tripe, to be blunt...

 

------------------

Keith

 

Blyth,

Northumberland

 

mailto:keith@go-fishing.co.ukkeith@go-fishing.co.uk

http://www.wacacnet.co.uk

 

[This message has been edited by Keith (edited 18 July 2001).]

[Guest Keith]

Originally posted by Leon Roskilly:

What we all have to choose from is one of the following arguments.

 

1. If hunting goes, fishing is next. Anglers should defend their sport by joining the defence of hunting.

 

2. If anglers join with hunters, we will surely be dragged down with them.

 

Leon, I've never managed to bring this to the nub of the matter quite as succinctly as that: and while I am utterly convinced by "option 2", it worries me greatly that so many of us - even on this very forum - are so clearly opposite in our perspectives.

 

But a useful analogy - I think - is to imagine a sinking ship: would you willingly step onto one?

 

And yet - given the utter stuffing that fox hunting has had, even with the resources and the lobbying of the Countryside Alliance behind it (an organisation which in truth was brought into being only to protect such huntng activity) the idea that siding with the blood sports lobby is our salvation would be exactly like stepping onto that sinking ship.

 

Remember that it isn't the antis that'll get us, it's the general public. As long as their view of us is of mildly eccentric, inordinately patient, and ultimately harmless characters, then there will never be a real threat.

 

Join up with the blood sports lobby and - in a very true sense - their blood will be on our hands too.

 

Like it or not, there is no faulting that analysis of our position.

 

 

------------------

Keith

 

Blyth,

Northumberland

 

mailto:keith@go-fishing.co.ukkeith@go-fishing.co.uk

http://www.wacacnet.co.uk

[Guest TheDacer]

i'm not keen on the thought of wearing a red jacket and a silly black hat either...

[Guest Nightwing]

I am appaled. I did not imagine that such a "them and us" attitude existed over there. Do you guys honestly belive what you are saying, that fishing is somehow moraly on the high ground when compared to hunting? I fish and hunt,(and yes, I do keep various species of fish for the table) and both are

"blood sports", as traditionaly defined. If you people honestly believe that when the anti's are done doing away with hunting, research, even pet ownership, that they will stop at fishing because you distanced yourself from your hunting bretheren, then I suspect those of you who still want to fish will be joining me along the bank here in the states in 20 or so years, because you will be done with it over there.

Please take a long, hard look at what you are saying, as burying your heads in the sand and hoping the anti's wont notice you is playing right into their plans.

I have enjoyed this board for about a year now, but never knew how much at odds I am in many ways to the rest of you(newt and a few others, not withstanding). I am truely sorry to see such a seperatest attitude here, and can well imaging fishing being done away with over there if this is the general attitude toward hunting, and the anti's.

I am sure that many of you will take my comments personaly and condemn me, and for that I am sad, as they are ment not as an attack, but more I guess as a warning that divided all of you will fall. Not to turn this into a US vs UK thread in any way, but maybe one reason that the anti's are so far ahead in their plans in the UK is that here in the states, many hunters and fisherman do both, and even those who don't are extrememly supportive of one another, so we present a much more united front to the anti hunting/fishing, animal welfare groups.