ANGLERS HAVE NOW MADE THEIR OWN BEDS

[COMMERCIALFISHERMAN]

Winters are warmer, summers are longer and things are changing quite fast in the marine environment.

Inshore marks that used to produce good numbers of sizable bass are now at bursting point with immature fish.

The offshore sandbanks and wrecks can and often do still produce many good-sized bass. So this suggests to me a movement of fish not necessarily a decrease.

Some anglers would like to see all commercial activity stopped everywhere; some would just like the so-called GOLDEN MILE. I would suggest their anger is misplaced. A large beam trawler working out past the six-mile limit catches more fish in a week than a small thirty-five foot inshore gill-netter does in one year!

 

By stirring up all this emotion and by stirring up government inperticular anglers are going to end up with less than when they started. Not necessarily less fish but lots of restrictions.

 

Its quite possible that in the future some of your favourite marks will be out of bounds, others my have bag limits attached to them. Anglers could even have to pay a licence for the basic right to fish. Once you are licensed then it’s easy for governments to impose many more rules on you and more restrictions.

 

I say that your arguments should be with the large beamers who are decimating your sport and my living, rather than targeting the little guys like myself. Sometime I feel inshore fishermen get so much flack as they are visual, they are seen going about their business where as the big beamers are working to far out to be seen.

[glennk]

Are you a real commercial fisherman ? You must be very important too your names in capitals. :o

[nick]

Hi Sam

[Jim Roper]

If the inshore potters are not allowed to catch their bait in their own hanging nets, will they then start buying all the undersize fish from trawlers without it being brought ashore?

 

Trying to put people like Wurzel out of business is stirring up trouble, in my eyes.

[glennk]

Nothing wrong with the small timers.

 

What happened to wurzel anyway - he is very quiet lately.

[Jim Roper]

Nothing wrong with the small timers.

 

What happened to wurzel anyway - he is very quiet lately.

 

 

I reckon he thinks he now has enough anglers seeing sense on these issues.

 

 

I hope he is well!

 

One question: Is a beam trawler, a trawler that tows a beam with a net attached to it, or a trawler that tows a trawl from outriggers attached at the beam of the vessel?

Edited January 6, 2007 by Jim Roper

[barry luxton]

Winters are warmer, summers are longer and things are changing quite fast in the marine environment.

Inshore marks that used to produce good numbers of sizable bass are now at bursting point with immature fish.

The offshore sandbanks and wrecks can and often do still produce many good-sized bass. So this suggests to me a movement of fish not necessarily a decrease.

Some anglers would like to see all commercial activity stopped everywhere; some would just like the so-called GOLDEN MILE. I would suggest their anger is misplaced. A large beam trawler working out past the six-mile limit catches more fish in a week than a small thirty-five foot inshore gill-netter does in one year!

 

By stirring up all this emotion and by stirring up government inperticular anglers are going to end up with less than when they started. Not necessarily less fish but lots of restrictions.

 

Its quite possible that in the future some of your favourite marks will be out of bounds, others my have bag limits attached to them. Anglers could even have to pay a licence for the basic right to fish. Once you are licensed then it’s easy for governments to impose many more rules on you and more restrictions.

 

I say that your arguments should be with the large beamers who are decimating your sport and my living, rather than targeting the little guys like myself. Sometime I feel inshore fishermen get so much flack as they are visual, they are seen going about their business where as the big beamers are working to far out to be seen.

 

Hi, welcome to the house of fire. If you consider that the beamers are the one's who are decimating the fish stocks, in your own interests you must speak out surly. What we see with our own eyes is what we comment on. At present the inshore waters at the top end of the channel are inundated with trawlers some with unrecognisable registrations, they are targeting the large cod moving down the channel. Good luck to them but the same every year, the rsa will be very lucky to see one or two of them. Not for the want of trying i last had a rough ground cod two years ago. They are present again but it will be pure luck if one is caught. In a few weeks the cod will have gone and with them the unrecognisable registered trawlers. This is what we see.

Edited January 6, 2007 by barry luxton

[Steve Coppolo]

Nothing wrong with the small timers.

 

What happened to wurzel anyway - he is very quiet lately.

 

I've tried phoning him a few times over the last few weeks and he's been out fishing both times. For Chub!

[JB]

One question: Is a beam trawler, a trawler that tows a beam with a net attached to it, or a trawler that tows a trawl from outriggers attached at the beam of the vessel?

Hi Jim,

Usually a modern day beam trawler tows two nets. Each is held open by means of a beam with a shoe on each end. The shoes hold the beam off the bottom. The reason for the beam is to hold the mouth of the net open under the strain of several tons of chain each side, which would close up a normal otter type trawl. (The chain is usually used to dig flatfish out of the sand.) The beam trawls are usually worked from the end of derricks, like the outriggers that you explained. However, you can also work a standard trawl from outriggers in the same way as the Gulf of Mexico shrimp boats do. There are a few Danes and Dutch working multi-rigs using this method in the North Sea in summer, usually fishing for prawns (Nephrops). They are affectionately known to UK commercial fishermen as Forrest Gumpers.

 

JB

[Guest challenge]

Hi Jim,

Usually a modern day beam trawler tows two nets. Each is held open by means of a beam with a shoe on each end. The shoes hold the beam off the bottom. The reason for the beam is to hold the mouth of the net open under the strain of several tons of chain each side, which would close up a normal otter type trawl. (The chain is usually used to dig flatfish out of the sand.) The beam trawls are usually worked from the end of derricks, like the outriggers that you explained. However, you can also work a standard trawl from outriggers in the same way as the Gulf of Mexico shrimp boats do. There are a few Danes and Dutch working multi-rigs using this method in the North Sea in summer, usually fishing for prawns (Nephrops). They are affectionately known to UK commercial fishermen as Forrest Gumpers.

 

JB

You would have thought that all commercial fishermen would have given all those complicated methods of fishing up years ago.

I mean according to people on here (in the know) pair trawling is 20 times more efficient than any other method of bottom trawling so when are commercial fishermen going to wise up? Maybe then they would not get associated with forest Gump?

Regards.