The preaching of total catch and release is loosing conservation suporters.

[stavey]

Steve,

 

 

 

Stavey

 

As you say progress has been slow, its taken 100 years to get what little we have. It depends on your individual opinion as to wether it has been worthwhile but the one positive thing that did come from the BMP is that the number of consultees increased dramatically and most of the new people are RSA orientated rather than commercial. this has to increase the chances of the RSA's getting a better hearing from any future consultation. A larger proportion of the country are getting a chance to have a say in the way fisheries are run, its up to them wether they take that opportunity but at least they were asked to comment unlike 20 years ago.

 

Dave

 

Hi dave

 

yep i agree that the list of consultee's was expanded for the benefit of the rsa's due to the fact of a lot of hard work done by the few, and i do and did appreciate that, but there can be know doubt in my mind that the whole point of any of it has'nt and is not likely to improve the quality of the sea angling in any of our lifetimes, infact i see it continuing on a downward turn (if that is feasable as it so poor now) if you are happy to keep chipping away and are content with results like what the last 100 years has braught and as others who appear to? dave thats fine, but it is a little to slooooooow for me and i think that it will be for a lot of others to cheers...................

[wirral sea fishing]

2 Points from me .....

 

I run alot of matches and as a result of consultation with local anglers and the like we have moved away from catch and release matches and back to wiegh match's, and the reasons are very simple,

 

The lots of clubs and others run catch and release matches to very small sizes indeed normally 20cm, this results in many more fish being injured or dying during a match than a "bag wieght", most look at this as conservation, but it is far from that and numbers of anglers taking part in such match's have slipped away, we have ran our match's for the past 3 years on a 2 fish rule, 1 round & 1 flat, this has proved a success in many ways, as all fish have to be in size then anglers are not fishing for undersize fish and this leads to less fish being killed, it has also had other positive reactions not only from those taking part but fom other areas around the country, today seen the start of the winter league that we run 52 angers turned and 10 went tot he scales (all with single fish) so this means that only 10 fish had been retained (all returned alive) yet if it had been catch and release with 52 anglers taking part and small size limits how many fish would not have made it back alive?

 

2nd - I own a tackle shop, and from time to time we do get survey's carried out, be it from the trade or goverment bodies so i suppose the figures of amount of anglers and money spent hold some truth, the goverment themselves want to double the amount of anglers by 2012, and i am sure this covers all aspects of our sport, but they do need to listen to people on the ground and not people in nice offices that go under organisational names.

[clem]

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QUOTE(Norm B @ Sep 24 2006, 12:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tried to reply to Clem's post but it wouldn't let me so I'll reply via this one, I hope it's OK.

The catch reports in the SAN are a week old at the most when we go to print and the same reports are on my website for all to see. www.seaanglingnews.co.uk so you don't have to buy a mag and read old reports, you can get up to date reports FREE.

Thanks for making that clear Norm I was thinking more about the old glossies that have been over charging for poor repetative content for years. I use the SAN website regular and the mag is prob. the best of the bunch.

[Steve Coppolo]

Theres a lot of talk in this thread along the lines of "we/you/they should do xyz" but its a very limited few who will actually get up and do something about it. You have recently spent a lot of time and effort putting down the few people who are dedicated towards trying to change things, time that would be better spent supporting those who actually get out there and do something.

 

I've spent quite a lot of time and effort supporting them actually Dave. I agree that the time and effort that some put in is admirable, but only if it's spent doing the right things and getting the right results. I happen to think that there should be a few changes made to the way things are being done. Am I allowed to think that? Or should I just be grateful that someone is doing something, anything, and shut up? I have been fishing for 40 years and I don't want to see my sport f***ed up by people who think they know what's best for everyone and won't listen to any views other than their own. If that upsets a few and makes me come across as ungrateful, so be it.

 

If many more anglers were as dedicated to the protection of our chosen sport as the likes of Leon, Tom, Ian and Ray Davies we would be flying along rather than the slow process we are making at the moment.

 

Flying along is great,.......if you're flying in the right direction. If you're going in the wrong direction, you just get further from where you want to be, in half the time.

 

You are totally entitled to your opinion that rsa has achieved "nothing worthwhile", fortunately not everyone sees it the same way or we would go back 100 years. You keep harping on about loosing all our rights...but hang on ..the previous sentence you said we had nothing worthwhile.

 

I didn't say that RSA had nothing worthwhile, I said RSA achieved nothing worthwhile. There's a big difference. What we have now is the right to fish where we want for no charge, and to take a few fish home to eat if we want to. If things carry on as they are we could end up losing those rights for nothing in return. In other words, someone could negotiate away those rights on your behalf and although the package you end up with might be acceptable to them, it won't necessarily be acceptable to you, me or the other 999,998 sea anglers out there.

 

the government will do exactly what they want in the long term, they did it to handgun shooting and fox hunting...the only way to stop them doing the same for us is by proving that RSA is a valuable contributor to the economy.

 

Or by telling them that we'll happily pay a fishing tax, won't take any fish home to eat and won't fish the best marks any more.

[Fastd]

Hi Steve,

 

Its obvious you and me have total different ways of looking at conservation, a bit like a rabbi and a priest sitting down to discuss religion, but at the end of the day we both want the same thing. You seem to disagree with the path people are taking and I am of the opinion that any path is better than non.

 

The process of getting recognition for sea angling will be a long one, but thanks to email, forums and the wealth of information available on the internet that process will snowball anf gather momentum. Its only in the last few years that technology has made it possible for people to share their thoughts and distribute information quickly and cheeply. This will work in our favour and hopefully as anglers we will all get a better deal than we are currently getting.

 

There is no need to give anything away, the government will take it if they want it. All we need to do is get recognised as contributors to the economy whilst causing minimum damage to it.

 

Can we chat about fishing now instead

 

Dave

[Steve Coppolo]

damage to it.

 

Can we chat about fishing now instead

 

Dave

 

 

No problem

 

I'm off out shortly, (if the rain eases off to a steady p*** down!), to try out a new saltwater fly rod. If I'm lucky I might catch a bass for my tea.