An Alliance Between Anglers And Commercials?

[Guest jay_con]

wurzel:

 

Fishermen that are concidered to be fishing sustainable should be rewarded with more quota or days at sea to encourage others.

Discards of under size fish must be at a bare minimum if not totaly eliminated.

Agree with you there. What about fishermen who dont fish sustainable methods?? Will you punish them? Less days at sea or is it a case of carrot and no stick??

[ColinW]

wurzel:

...I think the key to sustainable fishing is the landing sizes, they are much to small, there are arguements for letting the larger fish survive to spawn and only cropping the small fish, I say catching fish after it has spawned at least once is the better option...

I am stunned. I never thought Wurzel would ever say anything I agreed with! So if commercial fishermen and anglers alike think that fish should be allowed to spawn at least once, why the hell can't the rule makers see the blindingly obvious?

[Ian Burrett]

Wurzel

What do you recon the percentage of discards are?

I once read that in the Irish Sea 10 years ago a trawler would throw back 7 tons for every 10 they caught.

[stavey]

by wurzel:Fishermen that are concidered to be fishing sustainable should be rewarded with more quota or days at sea.

 

I second that incentive wurzel, and by rewarding such a sustainable attitude it should help to change and encourage fishermens ways that dont.

 

I think also the bass management plan also echoes part of this wurzel by the asking of a 45cm size limit to be brought in, according to them bass of this size have atleast one chance of breeding up to that size......

[Guest johnfranz]

Hello everyone, sorry been away so long, but one of the draw backs of trying to make a living out of the sea, is that you tend to spend a long time on it.

Have had a quick skip through the resent threads.

Few things would like to comment on.

Firstly, discards. I don’t know where big cod and autumn get there information from? But on what information they get they seam to be implying that all these discards that are being daily dumped back into the sea are small undersize cod.

For those of you who have never been trawling before let me try and put you in the picture. The only time that you catch fish in any large quantity in a trawl is ether when it is full of spawn or when it is full of feed. The reason for this is that the fish are obviously congregated in one area and are (when full of feed) to slow in the water to prevent themselves from being caught. I am trying to explain this in laymen’s terms so it might sound a bit daft at times.

When talking about discards fishermen will normally mean the amount of bulk that get in each haul of the trawl. So you might say we trawled for 4 hours and got 100 stone of bulk and we got 50 stone of fish (fish that would be put in fish room) out of it.

The 50 stone of discards could be undersize fish, star fish, sea urchins, weed and any other crap that you have trawled up in your four hour tow.

Now going back to what has been happening of Whitby in the last few weeks. We have not been on this fishery this year but I have spent many a summer fishing among the herring spawn previously.

I can assure you that most of the discards that these boats will be catching are seed whiting. Now I know you are going to say these are undersize fish just the same, but if I was to tell you that when the Whitby boats fish heavily for whiting (winter months) they will catch more whiting in a week than they discard for the six weeks or so when the herring fishery is ongoing. I can honestly say that in thirty odd year’s commercial fishing I have never seen large amounts of codling discards. If boats are dumping 200 stones of discards then I would be very surprised if there were more than 5 stones of these small codling.

I see we have another ex commercial fisherman join us on this forum (welcome by the way) may be he could tell us when he has been trawling the amount of undersize codlings that he ever shovelled back when he was fishing. Or maybe old man of the sea could put this subject at last into some realistic light?

Now I could go on for ever about the reasons why and why not, but I will just put this two you, when fishing for sprats the size of the meshes (that they have in the wing ends of the net) that catch the sprats are often in access of 14” in diameter.

Lets move on to sustainable fisheries, some one at long last mentioned farming and how good they where at having a sustainable industry. 75% of all grant and subsidy aid that is paid out by the eu somewhere in the rejoin of £30 billion pounds goes to 3% of the European population. The farmers.

You lads who seam to be good at looking things up on the internet please find out for us how much subsidy and aid did the fishing community get last year?

Someone said some where “have commercial fishermen got there own forum” then some one said later that not many of them can use a computer or words to that effect. You should step aboard a modern day trawler and just marvel at the amount of technology they have at there finger tips. How many of you out there are builders? Do you have your own building forum? How many of you out there are car mechanics, doctors, bakers do you all have your own forums? I think not. Come to that do charter boats have there own forum? I came on this forum because like you I also love angling.

My last point I would like to make is about recreational angling, the umbrella that you all seam to hide under.

Again I will welcome john and Michele, I will talk about you now that you are about to defend yourselves.

Last July we where fishing north east of brigantine field, you will know where I mean. I heard you talking to a Whitby trawler saying that you had had a descent day. Visited 5 wrecks and took somewhere in the rejoin of 170 stone of fish for your day? Is this the norm john? I whish we could catch 170 stone of cod in a day.

Looking on your web site I see a picture of your crewman in what must be a chillier with cod fillets.

The baskets that the fillets are in, we have one on board our boat. They will carry about six stone of fillets you look as if you have 12 baskets full on that photo. Looking at the fillets it’s all good fish (cod into double fingers) now I don’t know about recreational fishing, that sounds (170stone in a day) like bloody hard work.

There must be 3 grand’s worth of fish in that chillier, now I am not saying that any of your anglers sell there fish, but its 3 grand that they wont have to spend on fish, so isn’t that the same thing?

I know they will have paid a lot of money for there trip and I know that if I was fishing with a rod and line 140 miles from my home port I would want to be getting a fish or two but come on now.

Strange how you never seam to be giving us commercials a hard time? Is that because you where once one yourself or is it because you have no need to?

Good luck to you john and Michele your attempts to catch fish can only be admired and your filleting skill are second to none.

Stavey old mate. Has had a talk to a few different skippers on what you are trying to do (regards an alliance between commercials and anglers) a dam sight more interest shown than you got on this forum I can tell you.

If you ever fancy some first hand experience of the fishing industry mate I am sure I could organise a trip for you on a trawler, it would be no problem at all.

Autumn if you would like to spend 10 days with us what with the winter months coming up an all would make it my own personal pleasure to invite you along.

Back off to sea good fishing all.

[Guest jay_con]

quote:

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You should step aboard a modern day trawler and just marvel at the amount of technology they have at there finger tips. [/QB]

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I have been aboard both of the latest "new" additions to the port and yes I was totally amazed at the technology on there. I was also amazed at how clean they were. Is it right they employ cleaners?.

 

 

With regard to discards. I am wondering who to believe. I was talking to a chap last night whilst fishing who spends a lot of his time nosing about the key. He says the fishermen he has talked to on the key were claiming that for every codling landed over the past month - 7 or 8 have been thrown back dead as they were undersize. Then

later in the evening I was talking to one of the local processors who told me the very same story. He said that the quality of fish at the moment is very poor because of what it is feeding on and because it has been squashed in a net with so much bulk. He too told me the very same discards story.

 

Is there any research from cefas that has looked into your discards at herring spawn time which can either confirm or deny such claims???

[stavey]

: by binatone,Stavey old mate. Has had a talk to a few different skippers on what you are trying to do (regards an alliance between commercials and anglers) a dam sight more interest shown than you got on this forum I can tell you.

If you ever fancy some first hand experience of the fishing industry mate I am sure I could organise a trip for you on a trawler, it would be no problem at all.

 

I presume you mean john brennan? binatone when you say he has had a better responce than me about an alliance, if that is the case thats good maybe it would of been better if he had started this thread? i dont think it matters who did, the fact is someone has, and atleast some do appear to be taking some notice and actually starting to talk more possitively about the fish crises rather than pointing fingers,or saying that there is no crises.

 

As for a trip on a trawler, i dont need to do that i have already acknowledged that the business is not a cakewalk and i would not like to that as my job.

You and john and whoever else qaulifies on this forum both rely on fish for a living totaly, i do not, fish to me are a hobby it does'nt matter at the end of the day if there is not a single cod or any other species left in the our sea's i will carry on earning my living unaffected regardless but you and john and your like will be redundant/ /caput/finnished/done and dusted and alas so will my hobby, but i can learn to live with that, but can you?

 

I do care passionately about my hobby otherwise what the hell am i doing here? it just seems totaly stupid that the two groups of people (commercial fishermen and recreational sea anglers) can not put there differences aside and begin to pull in the same direction to address the problem that threatens there very existance , so come on binatone etc, be sensible and work with people like john brennan to form something, you can tare yourself away from the boat and catching fish, you must have time and the inclination otherwise you would not be here posting......

[Guest johnfranz]

Stavey sorry mate you must have read into my posting wrong. I can only take my hat off to you for your fine attempt to bring anglers and commercial fishermen together.

What I meant was I got a better response from commercial fishermen than you did from recreational anglers. Your thread was and is as far as I am concerned recommendable to anyone who has a passion for his hobby as you obviously have.

[Guest johnfranz]

What I meant to say was I have had a talk with different skippers. Not you have had sorry one word in this case has instead of have when relating to what I had done and not you.

Confused? I am. can only apologise again.

[stavey]

Binatone no worries, my mistake as well as yours, have you tryed to persuade many commercial skippers to pop up here to have a look and maybe make some comments it would help to keep this thread a bit more lively and obviously the more opinions the better, if not what did they say?