Does The Otter Deserve Such Bad Press?

[lutra]

lutra,

 

What's a sand angler?

 

Phone

Don't know Phone, what is a sand angler?

 

For a head in the sand one try googling the Angling trust its full of people that campain for cleaner waters with more fish in them yet don't want anything that might come with that like otters, cormorants, goosander, seals or anything else that might dare to come and have a nibble.

[Phone]

Lutra,

 

OoHHHH! ?

 

I re-read your post.

 

Phone

[garylee]

Can I please ask other posters what effect they believe otters have had on their fishing.

[Dales]

Can I please ask other posters what effect they believe otters have had on their fishing.

 

Put a smile on my face when I see one.

[Worms]

Put a smile on my face when I see one.

 

The same here. Apart from that otters have no effect on my fishing that I see.

[garylee]

Put a smile on my face when I see one.

 

The same here. Apart from that otters have no effect on my fishing that I see.

Thanks

Edited February 21, 2013 by garylee

[Dales]

I have been fishing a club lagoon water over the winter a natural stocked water and there are Otters in the area as I have seen them. The club also has a lake next to the lagoon with Otter fences to protect the high carp stocks.

 

It's amazing the difference in opinion between the different groups of anglers who fish each water even though at one point there is only about 25ft of ground between the 2 waters. The Carp anglers on the enclosed water are sure the Otters will destroy everything but many of those fishing the lagoon and near by river claim there presence has not changed the fishing much.

[Anderoo]

I remember living in the fens in the 80s and 90s - the bogeyman then was the zander, who was by all accounts eating its way through all the roach and bream, and worse than that, killing them for fun. Within 5-10 years, we were told, they will have killed all the fish.

 

Sound familiar?

 

At one point the rise in zander numbers co-incided with a period where the then NRA were pumping the drains too hard in the spring and summer, sucking whole year classes of fry out to sea. People put two and two together and got five, assuming it was the zander that had killed them all. The same thing is happening now with otters.

 

There are plenty of otters in Oxfordshire. I've seen them on two rivers, the Windrush and the Thames. In fact, the one I saw on the Thames was on the same night I caught by PB chub. Far from sending me into a spiral of paranoia and fury, it capped off a really magical night that I will remember for a long, long time Under the freezing black and starry sky I first looked in amazement at the biggest chub I've ever seen, and then a little while later saw what I thought was a fish rolling in the inky water. I kept watching and saw the otter pop his head up and swim silently upstream towards me in the middle of the river. Eventually he realised he was being watched and slipped beneath the surface without a sound or a ripple, and was gone.

 

I have seen no negative impact on my fishing because of otters. The one impact I have noticed is the declining number of mink. I used to see them an awful lot on the Windrush in particular. As their numbers declined, I saw (or, more often heard - 'plop'!) a corresponding increase in the number of watervoles, which are probably my favourite native mammal. Wonderful fat little things

 

Otters have been around for about 30 million years, and haven't managed to eat all the fish yet. The thing that's changed in the last couple of decades is angling taste and fashion, not nature.

 

There's so much misinformation and supposition flying about now, it's hard to unpick it all. I've read loads of times how otters have 'decimated' the upper Thames catchment area and how it's not worth fishing the rivers any more. All I can say to that is that either the people who make such claims are repeating false information and passing it off as fact, or have tried and failed to catch the fish that are, I assure you, still there.

 

Because of all the negative press, anyone who sees an otter now, or comes across a half-chewed fish on the bank, believes that it's an animal that some misguided 'tree-hugger' has bred in captivity and then released. This view is held so firmly that I've tried and failed many times to convince people that this just isn't happening. Chances are, if you do have otters near you, they have been there for a lot longer than you think, and got there perfectly naturally.

 

Fish do not exist for us to catch - that's not why they are there in any natural water. If they are there for us to catch and you want to prevent any natural predation from otters, put a fence around it. If for whatever reason you can't fence it, sorry but that's life. Our hobby is not life or death stuff, we make little forays into the natural world, and we have to accept that, aside from artificially managed waters which can be anything the owners want them to be, nature will do whatever it likes. We have to accept it and stop whinging that something that has evolved to eat fish has eaten a fish.

[garylee]

Anderoo, on 21 Feb 2013 - 09:08, said:

 

I have seen no negative impact on my fishing because of otters.

 

Thank you

Edited February 21, 2013 by garylee

[Phone]

garylee,

 

They CAN have an impact. While I am not a white bass (similar to perch) fisherman the otters are seriously out of control in parts of the White River in our Ozark Mountains. I'm going to lie to you about the numbers but it seems like they released 10 and now there are a 1,000 - some such ratio. Also, parts of the Northeast US (NY) has a preceived otter problem.

 

It is possible. As for my carp - bring on the otter. Otter can't or don't harvest healthy specimen fish. It's no fun catching 75 5 lb carp in a session. When otters are around some days you can catch 6 or 8 30's. Much more rewarding.

 

Phone