Bass

[Local Fisherman]

BASS states 400,000 anglers fish for Bass (Parliamentary Monitor Article)

 

If 400,000 anglers go Bass fishing once a year and retain a 1kg Bass each they would remove 400 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a month and retain a 1kg Bass they would remove 4800 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a week and retain a 1kg fish each they would remove 20800 tons of Bass from the sea.

 

In 2000 licensed fishermen in the UK landed 401 tons of Bass (DEFRA Statistics of fish landings in England, Wales & Northern Ireland by port)

 

Which sector is doing the real damage?

 

When 36 to 40cm Bass are at plague preportions in the southwest please dont moan. Just remember they will eat all the food and the other fish will have to move offshore to feed.

 

All spelling mistakes are alcohol enduced

[Norm B]

BASS states 400,000 anglers fish for Bass (Parliamentary Monitor Article)

 

If 400,000 anglers go Bass fishing once a year and retain a 1kg Bass each they would remove 400 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a month and retain a 1kg Bass they would remove 4800 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a week and retain a 1kg fish each they would remove 20800 tons of Bass from the sea.

 

In 2000 licensed fishermen in the UK landed 401 tons of Bass (DEFRA Statistics of fish landings in England, Wales & Northern Ireland by port)

 

Which sector is doing the real damage?

 

When 36 to 40cm Bass are at plague preportions in the southwest please dont moan. Just remember they will eat all the food and the other fish will have to move offshore to feed.

 

All spelling mistakes are alcohol enduced

Most anglers who fish for bass don't catch a bass and of those that do, most put their fish back. Before bass became fashionable and expensive they weren't targeted and there were plenty of them but there were still more of the other fish than there are now, so your figures prove nothing, unless you are saying that the bass have eaten them all. .

[FishingGuernsey]

2000 is a long time ago. Bass landings in Guernsey alone last year (2005) were 173 tons (commercial figures).

 

I very much doubt that 400,000 anglers each manage to land 1kg of bass a week. Lets be realistic here. If only all of them could catch that many bass, I mean 52kg a year. Did you account for out of season etc etc???

Edited November 15, 2006 by FishingGuernsey

[Leon Roskilly]

BASS states 400,000 anglers fish for Bass (Parliamentary Monitor Article)

 

If 400,000 anglers go Bass fishing once a year and retain a 1kg Bass each they would remove 400 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a month and retain a 1kg Bass they would remove 4800 tons of Bass from the sea. If they go once a week and retain a 1kg fish each they would remove 20800 tons of Bass from the sea.

 

In 2000 licensed fishermen in the UK landed 401 tons of Bass (DEFRA Statistics of fish landings in England, Wales & Northern Ireland by port)

 

Which sector is doing the real damage?

 

When 36 to 40cm Bass are at plague preportions in the southwest please dont moan. Just remember they will eat all the food and the other fish will have to move offshore to feed.

 

All spelling mistakes are alcohol enduced

 

 

The DEFRA figures for commercial landings do not cover the under 10 metre vessels who are not obliged to provide landing figures, and neither are fish caught in English waters landed in ports outside of England, so the DEFRA figures quoted are very misleading (but you probably knew that!)

 

Many bass anglers return most of the bass that they catch and a significant number return all of the fish.

 

The increased mls will apply to recreational anglers as well as commercial fishermen, so if they were the ones doing the damage then the new regualtions will have a greater positive impact (currently the bass mls does not apply to shore anglers, the new legislation introducing a higher mls will).

 

 

Large bass eat small bass.

 

By trimming the stock at 36cm, removing the larger bass and leaving nothing to eat the surplus bass fry, commercial fishermen are the ones that are responsible for any 'plague' of bass 'eating everything'!

 

Plenty of bass around indicates a plentiful food supply for bass and other fish, there is absolutely no evidence at all that bass will outcompete other species 'driving them out'. The claim is merely a spurious and desperate argument with no basis in reality.

 

 

 

Left alone, bass can live some 25 years, grow to over 20lbs and spawn up to 15 times, as nature intends.

 

 

A 36cm bass is just around 1 lb, at 40 cm hardly any bass will have spawned, at 42cm half will have spawned and at 45cm nearly all will have spawned and will be just over 2lb in weight.

 

 

Bass spawn offshore during the winter months in water of 9C or more.

 

The fry drifts inshore as plankton where they take up residence and feed in shallow nursery areas, mostly estuaries.

 

 

(Large congregations of juvenile bass occuring in estuaries are not local populations that will stay around as adults, consumning more local resources as they grow. once they near maturity they will leave the nursery areas and fan out over the whole regioin, so in the Thames estuary (say), the nursery population will become the bass stocks for much of the east coast and the south-east, some moving away even further. A regional stock of immature bass gathered in a single nursery area may appear to be in huge numbers, but compared to the size of the range of the stock they represent they are in fact a very vulnerable resource)

 

Until the current succession of mild winters most year groups perished in the winter cold, with only around one in ten surviving.

 

By removing the larger fish from the population and relying on early spawners, should there be a return to colder winters then without a good stock of larger veteran spawners the bass stocks will collapse. Three bad winters in a row is all that is needed, and the last two years haven't been good.

 

(A good stock of larger fish is needed to ensure the robustness of the breeding population. Veteran spawners not only produce a greater amount of spawn, but their fry is far more viable with a greater proportion surviving than in a fishery that is balanced on a razor, reliant on recruitment from relatively few first or second time spawners)

[wurzel]

Hello Leon

 

quote

 

but compared to the size of the range of the stock they represent they are in fact a very vulnerable resource)

 

 

So vulnerable the French pair teams can hammer hell out of them for the last 20 odd years with out any real noticeable difference to the stock, if any thing the stock has increased.

[glennk]

My thoughts.

 

Most the bass anglers Ive spoken to return a majority of their catch. Secondly I am one of those 400 000 bass anglers. I fish for bass on a few occasions each summer. To date my lifetime haul sits at 3 legal sized bass 2 of which would be illegal when the new measures come in. Im not you average bass angler but if others are as succesful as me your figures are way out.

[Leon Roskilly]

Hello Leon

 

quote

 

but compared to the size of the range of the stock they represent they are in fact a very vulnerable resource)

So vulnerable the French pair teams can hammer hell out of them for the last 20 odd years with out any real noticeable difference to the stock, if any thing the stock has increased.

 

 

But what we have is a recruitment fishery Wurzel, following a run of a number of unusually mild winters.

 

When conditions turn against bass, reliant mainly on relatively few survivors, I will take no pleasure in saying 'we told you so'!

 

The oft repeated statement that ICES regard the bass fishery as sustainable, always ignores the rider that effort should be pegged at the 2002 level, since when effort has increased substantially.

 

 

Without any real noticeable difference to the stock?

 

Inshore anglers have noticed a difference, there are far fewer large fish around than there was in the past, particularly as a proportion of the total numbers of bass caught - that is not good!

 

And especially that is not good for anglers!

[barry luxton]

BASS states 400,000 anglers fish for Bass (Parliamentary Monitor Article)

 

 

 

When 36 to 40cm Bass are at plague preportions in the southwest please dont moan. Just remember they will eat all the food and the other fish will have to move offshore to feed.

 

 

 

Ohhhh Dear,

 

(Then we will just have to nuke them.) Many people would like the chance to catch a bass of that size. No doubt the french see a lot of them, they have been hammering them for years apparently. Some one else said that that these are the perfect plate size? Personally, i would rather see one over ten pounds wouldn't you? I know it would be rather tough to eat but who would want to.

 

regards barry

[wurzel]

But what we have is a recruitment fishery Wurzel, following a run of a number of unusually mild winters.

 

When conditions turn against bass, reliant mainly on relatively few survivors, I will take no pleasure in saying 'we told you so'!

 

The oft repeated statement that ICES regard the bass fishery as sustainable, always ignores the rider that effort should be pegged at the 2002 level, since when effort has increased substantially.

Without any real noticeable difference to the stock?

 

Inshore anglers have noticed a difference, there are far fewer large fish around than there was in the past, particularly as a proportion of the total numbers of bass caught - that is not good!

 

And especially that is not good for anglers!

 

Hello Leon

You really are a stuck record needing a nudge to bring you up to date.

 

All commercial fisheries are recruitment fisheries to a point, the only way to cure that is by banning all commercial fishing, it is not a recruitment fishery in the context you perceive or trying to portray.

 

When conditions turn against bass, they will be good for cod recruitment, so if allowed the effort would also switch, nothing there that has not happened in the past.

 

If you want effort pegged at 2002 levels, we'll have to find more boats, I can think of four boats that have packed up in and around my patch since then, where do you get the information that effort has increased substantially? you have the results of a gill net survey for the Thames estuary done by the Environment Agency, (they could not find any)

 

Inshore anglers have certainly noticed a difference, there are a hell of a lot more bass, the only reason fewer larger bass are being caught in proportion to total numbers is because 99.9% of them are only 5 or 6 years old.

 

I took a couple of forum members lure fishing for bass last summer, not so far off shore, I think they could confirm that the majority of the fish caught were over 45 cm.

 

Things are no where near as bad as you try to spin them out to be Leon, you are not talking to some numpty DEFRA official with no experience at some stakebloodyholders meeting.

[Leon Roskilly]

If you want effort pegged at 2002 levels, we'll have to find more boats, I can think of four boats that have packed up in and around my patch since then, where do you get the information that effort has increased substantially? you have the results of a gill net survey for the Thames estuary done by the Environment Agency, (they could not find any)

 

 

More than made up for Wurzel by Spanish and French boats moving off the closed anchovy fishery onto bass, and Dutch and Belgium boats with no cod quota coming down to have a go.

 

Bass, being a non-quota species, is a handy species to move onto once quota for other commercial species becomes scarce.