I don't think they'd get a Wingham membership !

[kirisute]

in the end it comes down to one thing:

your own personal level of "care"

if you accept you are partaking in a "blood sport" then the bench is set for you to decide what you find acceptable or not.

 

Take pheasant shooting: we breed maybe 1000 birds a year, raise them from 2 day chicks through to release upon the farm. they are then penned in and fed and watered until mature enough to be released. then kept (hopefully) in the area by feeders and cover crops until we shoot the land at the end of the year!

 

Now; we can glitz that up as much as we like;

Hundreds of pounds spent on heating and feeding the chicks until they are strong enough to go out in pens.

hundreds of pounds spent on pens and feed

hundreds of man hours spent ensuring the environment they will be released in is suitable and maintained to the best of standards.

 

then we line up 10 people with shotguns..make a shed load of noise scaring the birds out of their wits and blow the crap out of them for sport!!

 

that's the cold hard truth of the matter.

 

The odd thing is; I can accept, to myself that; along the way, we are producing conservation areas for wild birds, feeding wildlife alongside the pheasants, controlling vermin, creating superb natural habitats that will benefit a lot of wildlife etc and that the birds are handled as best as they truly can be, given the end goals!

all birds shot go into our food chain.

 

I can also accept the US hunting culture! Bow fishing; deer hunting....

 

where do I draw the line? I don't understand shooting bear for sport, any of the "big 5", cougars, giraffe so on and so on....I personally don't like the way the fish are handled in the video! Ive stated before as well; that videos from the US for Pen fishing rods with poor carp handling etc will not be suitable for a UK audience! and I believe I was right when I stated such things.

 

so we make our own choices..

if its your fishery and you invested in the fish then you can have a rule stating all fish need to be laid on a mat; kissed on the lips, given a band aid, patted on the tush (as Bob Ross used to say), treated with antiseptic spray and released to the tune of pan pipes if you so wish! and the people fishing those waters will have to respect those rules!

 

if it aint your fishery then you simply have to follow the rules: as a bailiff and club chairman I would certainly be berating the people in the video if that was one of our waters.

 

the thing is its a world of double standards that will never reach and level playing field because the standards change on a personal level!

 

To me; like Chesters...I accept that in general the "public" are actually effecting my life in 10 second periods! that is to say: the chances of me thinking about them, and them thinking of me are likely to take up no more than 10 seconds of my life at any one given time!

You bump into someone in Tesco; they **** you off; maybe 10 seconds later they have forgotten you and you have forgotten them! life goes on!

would I then give a flying crap if they were hit by a car 30 mins later and killed? nope! not in the slightest!!

and that's what Chesters was getting at!

that's also reversed: we, here in the forum; have a nice little community....maybe some of us are friends, maybe some of us have met up outside of the forums etc..but if I suddenly disappeared because I was killed...I wouldn't honestly expect any single one of you to care much beyond the initial 10, 5, 2, minutes of shock when and IF you heard the news! and I wouldn't come back and haunt you for that! LOL

 

yes there are terrible, horrible things going on in life....wrong things, right things, acceptable to some and not to others things.....but in the end; its our own level of acceptance and justification that rules what we find acceptable or not!

 

I was steward on a carp lake where they only wanted 50lbs of carp in the keepnet at any one point in time! to me it was reasonable; to some of the chaps fishing the match it wasn't reasonable and they would have happily stuffed their nets with 100lb of fish!

to the owner; she was happy to actually go fro 30lb's per net! it was her fish that were being man handled after all!

 

to me; is there much difference between a wet mat, or a nice patch of grass soaked from the landing net? nope. not really.

do I understand the argument that barbed hooks might be better for fish than barbless? nope not at all...my mind will pretty much always think barbless has to be logically better!

Edited June 3, 2015 by kirisute

[chesters1]

Blimey thats a thought ,pann pipes on releasing fish ,what a fine noise that would be at a club match ,mandatory unhooking mats ,landing nets (yes some people dont have one and have to be "reminded")and pann pipes LOL

 

As you say as a bailiff my decisions are based on rules and my interpretation of them, i dont need (nor really have)my own outlook to use ,i dont like bivvies blocking up the path between swims but i put up with it ,and i dont like waiting for a pole angler to move his pole but i put up with it.

 

As i said if no rules are broken in the vid then what business is it of anyone else ,if you want to mount a high horse theres more important things than fish to get on it for i am sure.

 

And this is a bloke that hates wildlife programs because things die (they are two fold anyway and half is about death and the other reproduction so a little pointless) but fish ,my lifes to short to worry about them or much else but me or mine

 

You will also see when our overseas friends post their not to uk fare fishing videos i generally thank them but few others do ,the trouble is when people get so far up their own arses all they see are themselves and they miss out on everything else

 

As you say the only vid i have objected to was a bear shooting one ,a bit pointless really and are guns in anyway "sporting" ? The stalking perhaps is noteworthy but not my cuppa tea ,to others its fine they are welcom to their opinion so long as i am

 

I had some training with lord colemans (yes that one) elderly bailiff and it puzzled me the care he took of raising his birds ,i asked why and he said pride and the fact if the boss was unhappy it was his job on the line ,canny old boy ,long dead now

 

But (i like both sides) the vermin are only vermin because they kill the birds wink ,i have killed scores of foxes ,i like you i expect can see both sides of the fence ,now theres two feeding in my garden most nights ,basically because i no longer have birds ,they effect me or mine and things change

 

I think a party would be arranged to rejoice when i kick the bucket but hopefully the forum would not decline because nasty old chesters often disagreed and upset someones applecart ,negativity is far better than nothing at all IMHO life would be a bad place when everyone patted each other on the back and agreed with each other and forum threads very short as well!

Edited June 3, 2015 by chesters1

[kirisute]

its odd:

the missus bought me an RSPB membership for my birthday! a couple of weeks after I had joined BASC in fact! LOL

the car now has the BASC sticker on one side, and the RSPB on the other! im sure it gets a few funny looks sat in an RSPB reserve car park! LOL

 

but having said that my family is good friends with an RSPB officer who has probably "taken care" of 100+ foxes in this last year to ensure the "nesting birds" were unharmed! taking care of foxes usually involves a .177 round through the lug hole!

 

we regularly lamp a "free range chicken farm"...we are now up to 50 odd foxes "controlled" from there with a regular death toll of 100+ chickens on some nights just so "little tree hugger jonny" can ensure his chickens lived "wild and free"!!

thats wild and free enough to be savaged by foxes, rats and various other prey species on a nightly basis!

Edited June 3, 2015 by kirisute

[Dales]

Not quite as impressive as a single 10lb 2oz one ...sorry couldn't help myself.

 

Or a 10lb 4 ounce one ...sorry I couldn't help myself either .

 

I think this will be my sixth season at Wingham, have i had a double NO. These AN rogues pop down for the weekend, fill their faces with BBQ and bag some doubles. It's not right, it's just not right......

[Tigger]

Andy,

 

For the three thousandth time. 18% plus or minus of hooked fish die. That is, they die exclusively as a result of being hooked.

 

Phone

 

 

Phone,

that's total poppy-cock. If that where the case there would be naff-all left in the uk waters. Growing through childhood I've caught lots of fish and then transported them in buckets to ponds and they've thrived. Only the other day I caught a mini tench from a little pond and put it in a pool in my garden, within a couple of hours it was eating food and there's not a sign of where the fish was hooked...that was using a barbed hook also.

 

Regarding fish handling, you only need to look at fish farms or the aquarium trade etc to see that handling does them no serious harm if it's done with a little care. The clowns in the vid showed little concerns over the well being of the fish and handling them in such a manner could cause at least some of them to have damage through banging about on the floor, loss of slime and stress etc which can then lead on to them to becomeing ill in some way and die. Just a little common sense would cut back losses to a minimum leaving the fish in a sound condition when they're released.

[Tigger]

I think this will be my sixth season at Wingham, have i had a double NO. These AN rogues pop down for the weekend, fill their faces with BBQ and bag some doubles. It's not right, it's just not right......

 

 

Yeah, you are right Dales LOL. Just like the lottery really...pure luck no matter what anyone says .

[Andy_1984]

Andy,

 

For the three thousandth time. 18% plus or minus of hooked fish die. That is, they die exclusively as a result of being hooked.

 

I can't believe you are stupid so you must be ill informed. Google Scholar should help. There must be a thousand studies that confirms fishing kills fish. You seem unable to accept fishing is a blood sport no matter how you want to alter the words used.

 

If you are arguing for arguments sake I understand. If you really don't understand - it can't be said any more clearly. I doubt if 10 thousand studies would convince you. You have your mind made up.

 

Phone

Are you mental or something. Have I ever said anything to suggest what we do doesnt have some negative impact. Have I ???

 

No I bloody well havnt. What is it thats so hard to accept about making sure the fish you catch go back as well as possible.

 

Really c'mon what is wrong with that ? Tell me.

[Steve Walker]

I don't believe that 18% figure is generally true, though I can accept that it may well be true of some species and some fishing practices. Very sure it isn't true for UK practices and cyprinid species, and very sceptical that it's true of our salmonids.

 

That figure, I suspect, comes from this paper;

 

http://www3.carleton.ca/fecpl/pdfs/Bartholomew%20Review.pdf

 

It's a meta-analysis of other papers estimating mortality. With my statistics hat on, the first thing that leaps out at me is this statement;

 

"Mean mortality for the 274 estimates was 18%, the median 11%, and range 0–95%. The mortality distribution was highly skewed with 46% of estimates below 10% mortality, 23% between 10 and 20% mortality, 9% between 20 and 30%, and 22% of estimates above 30% mortality."

 

If the distribution is highly skewed, the mean (18%) is the wrong estimate of central tendency to use, because it is highly sensitive to outliers. The median (11%) is the appropriate measure. I think that even 11% is likely too high for the tougher cyprinids when best practice is followed.

[gozzer]

People respond emotionally to what they respond to. It's not a conscious choice. I suspect that it's to do with the degree of resemblance to people (or animals) they care about.

 

Look at this, for example;

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/#B29

 

Thanks Steve.

I'm not an academic, and some of those surveys/experiments go over my head, but that one appears to me to be more concerned with racism, and it's effect on empathy. To say that one feels more empathetic towards something familiar, seems to me, to be stating the obvious. If it wanted to prove something less obvious, then having some black people who have been brought up as equals, in a white society would make a much more interesting experiment. Or maybe they could find enough.

 

Back on topic, which I see has expanded over night. Much of what I believe has already been said, except that it's mainly been from an angling/catching point of view. I believe we as anglers have a responsibility to try and protect more than just our right to catch fish. Fish are just one link in a massive chain, and if we concentrate more on just one link, then the chain is liable to break in other places. As much as the bad treatment of a few dozen fish might anger, or upset someone, it's a small thing compared to many of the other things that happen. And many of them are done in the name of, and with the consent of anglers themselves.

 

John.

[Phone]

Andy,

 

You need to define "WE" - you sure as 'ell criticize my "techniques".

 

Tigger,

 

Perhaps you need to use Google Scholar also. You only wish it was "total poppy-cock". (One study that amazed me - "in summer months the Themes has 56,000,000 fish - in winter 8,000,000". Fish can replace themselves at an astonishing rate.

 

Steve,

 

For brevity, what number is acceptable? I concede different "studies" show different results. One can get mired in detail if you so choose (juveniles under 1 year for example). The fact remains - fish that "swim away" do so to die.