is there any POINT not having a licence

[Leon Roskilly]

Jaffa:

Eels at £250 a kilo.

er, Brian Knight (Eel 'expert' from UCL) was trying to convince us recently that the reason for a reduction in eel landings is down to the poor price that they continue to fetch!

 

(Currently between £7.70 and £9.90 per Kg - see Billingsgate Prices - June 2005)

 

 

Perhaps you are thinking of glass eels Jaffa?

 

They are a different kettle of fish!

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 26. June 2005, 09:47 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Steve Walker]

What problems do we have which could be solved by the government spending some more money?

[Leon Roskilly]

It's a question of management and enforcement Steve.

 

At the moment the management objectives are geared toward producing a commercial product which is only concerned with tonnage of fish and conservation of commercially important species.

 

Currently, the cost of all the fisheries research, administration, enforcement etc is born by the taxpayer.

 

More and more, the government is looking toward the 'User Pays' principle whereby those who benefit/need to be regulated, contribute towards the public costs.

 

That has resulted in proposals that inshore fishermen be charged something in the order of £1,000 - £1,500 per year (offshore is a different regime where fleets of different nations fish, so is not part of the proposals).

 

Now anglers are not just interested in lots of small fish, but we would also like to see bigger fish, areas protected from netting etc, and development and protection of some stocks not regarded as commercially important, all aimed at delivering a quality angling 'product' (more and bigger fish for anglers).

 

That means a change to some fishery management objectives, with research needed etc, mostly entirely for the benefit of Recreational Sea Anglers.

 

That being so, in line with 'cost recovery' principles (if it comes), it is proposed to introduce a rod licence.

 

(We may know more about this next week - see

http://www.anglers-net.co.uk/sacn/latest/i...ex.php?view=328 )

 

The line taken by the representative organisations is that (broadly) anglers would not find it acceptable to be charged with the present degraded 'product'. We would want to see real improvements first, not just plans or measures in place that might or might not work. We want to see those more and bigger fish. Then it is worth talking about anglers contributing to the cost of maintaining that.

 

That message seems to be largely taken on board by the authorities 'Give us something worth paying for, only then talk about asking us to pay'.

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 26. June 2005, 11:05 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[Steve Walker]

Hmm.

 

I still think the whole concept is cheeky. The recreational fishery doesn't *need* managing, it needs leaving alone. It strikes me that expecting anglers to pay for the regulation of the commercial sector is like expecting birdwatchers to pay for the policing of the laws on egg collecting.

 

Environmental protection (which includes managing sea fisheries sustainably) is a core responsibility of government which should be paid for out of general taxation. Attempting to recover from anglers the cost of protecting a natural resource from commercial exploitation is just plain wrong.

 

Having said that I'm opposed to it in principle, I would support it in practice if I thought it would actually work. I suspect that it won't, it will just be another tax, and not a particularly cheap or efficient one to enforce.

[dave123456]

I'm still in two minds about a rod licence, part of me would not mind paying if the government put a ban on commercial fishing and netters around the coast of a few miles. Would have to be a ban on ALL countries fishing in our waters, not just on british boats.

 

The other half of me thinks how on earth are the government going to patrol the whole coast line 24/7, since not everyone fish's from just piers and if you do you have to pay too fish. Will you still have to pay for that aswell as a licence?

 

I'm with Steve I can't see how they can enforce it, just seems to be another tax.

[Leon Roskilly]

The EA enforce the rod licence on inland waters.

 

Not every licence needs to be checked in every place on every day. Not every angler's licence has to be checked every year.

 

Just enough times that the risk of one day being caught is enough for the vast majority of anglers to feel uncomfortable enough not having a licence on them when a stranger appears to be willing to buy peace of mind when fishing and to pay their bit towards the benefits that come from the spending of their licence fee.

 

Add up the length of all the rivers and streams, canals and brooks, burns and becks. You already have much, much more bank that needs to be covered, than there are miles of coastline.

 

Now double that (because both banks need to be covered) then add in the distance around all of the ponds, lakes, resevoirs, moats etc tens of thousands of them!

 

And rememeber, most freshwater fishing locations are hidden in bushes and undergrowth, and reedbeds that go out into the water, and fished by anglers often wearing camourflage in extremely hard to get to places, off the beaten track.

 

If they can succesfully largely 'enforce' a freshwater licence, a sea licence isn't going to be as much of a problem as many sea anglers think it may be.

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 26. June 2005, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[tack4]

Steve Walker:

Hmm.

 

I still think the whole concept is cheeky. The recreational fishery doesn't *need* managing, it needs leaving alone. It strikes me that expecting anglers to pay for the regulation of the commercial sector is like expecting birdwatchers to pay for the policing of the laws on egg collecting.

i can see your point but being in my infancy at sea fishing (almost two years now) and having the kids getting hooked pardon the pun! I would like to see a sustainable fish stock.

 

If we lived in Iceland we would all gladly stump up £20 to fish their inshore waters i'd bet.

[Steve Walker]

I can't find concrete figures for the enforcement costs of licenses, but a government document examining the possibility of introducing them in Scotland quotes 20%-25% on an income of about 18 million. So somewhere in the region of 4 million pounds.

 

Total EA spending on fisheries for 2004 was about 29 million pounds, with 18 million of that coming from license sales, 10 million coming from direct government aid and the source of the remaining 1 million unclear. It was lumped in with the licensing receipts, and I'm not sure where they get it from.

 

Those sound like big numbers. Let's put them in context. The Arts Council for England has been allocated a budget of 410 million pounds for 2005/6.

 

That's just a single source of arts funding. In 1996, total public grants to the performing arts alone were estimated at over 450 million pounds.

 

Over the past four years the government has given 60 million pounds to the Football Foundation to fund grass roots football.

 

I could spend more time fishing for other figures, but you get the idea, and I'm shortly off to fish for tench instead.

 

Bottom line is that we're getting a raw deal. Our sport is a net contributor to government spending, when other interests are net recipients. That's why I think that licenses are cheeky.

 

[ 26. June 2005, 03:17 PM: Message edited by: Steve Walker ]

[Ken Davison South Wales]

It's a very good point Steve, but we would more likely receive more funds once we had a well financed body looking after our interest.

 

I have always thought the funding of the so called arts has been grossly over done.

 

They do however have what we lack, that well fund body to represent their interest.

[maidstonemike]

Steve Walker, you are spot on! It's a farce. a big con. I am very surprised that some anglers have fallen for it. They actually think that their catches will improve if they pay a license fee! As for 'managing' the fish stocks, what a laugh! If they had any intention of doing that, it would have needed to have started in the 60's to have any effect now.

It will take decades of tough no fishing policies, and MAYBE it will not be too late.

So why pay a license fee for decades before any reuslts are forthcoming?