Fishing

I was thinking of my Mother in law!

Take a look at @SouthernIFCA's Tweet: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Good move from a conservation point. But it's a bit hard on the recreational side which will make up a tiny minority of fish caught.

You can only kill a fish once, personally I would never keep a Bass unless I was sure it would not survive. I also always use hooks with the barbs flattened.

Has there ever been any research into what percentage of fish, (say bass for example) that die naturally, either of old age (  ) or being eaten by something further up the food chain, as opposed to being caught by fishermen?

That would be an interesting statistic.

As a vegetarian, I feel sorry for some fisherman. Not many, but some.
As George Clooney said to his worried wife/vixen ? while being the Incredible Mr Fox, and "stealing" the corporation's chickens, "I'm just a wild animal, dear. I can't help it". Shorely a bit of wildness is allowed.

Hope I'm not hijacking again ?

I caught a Bass of 4.5lbs which I took home and ate, we had fried fillets with chilli sauce and fried rice, then using a few small pieces and the head to make a boullibase which we fed another six people with. It was all feckin handsome but in defence I only usually take one or two bass a year it's not people like me that are the problem with fish stocks. In fact sometimes I feed the fish a lot more than they feed me.

Thanks for the link Seadog. Interesting.
In this modern world of competing industries, this quote stood out for me

some angler or other I assume wrote:

Bass angling generates more income to the economy and takes far fewer fish. Surely its now time to make the bass fishery recreation only.

Is everything down to the dollar ? Does it excuse everything ?
This is the sort of logic and philosophy that our society is left with. On the one hand, there's an agriculture and fisheries big boy industry to supply food for people to eat, and then there's the new big boy on the block, the leisure industry, saying humans in this neck of the shallows should only fish for sport, and not food.
Leaving out the whole quota/macro/micro food production debate, the very idea of a few people fishing bass for sport, while the mass cannot fish bass for food is something out of a dystopian nightmare. Firstly, if you catch it, and it's big enough, have the decency to eat it, shorely, to respect the fish and fellow humans ?
Sounds like the fat old squire casting to catch his old rival in the estate carp pond for the heck of it, while outsiders starve. I was brought up in the leisure industry. It's a strange old topsy turvy world with strange cultures and practices.

I've never really understood the point of fishing for sport.

I appreciate that getting out and going somewhere is fun just like any other day trip might be and fishing may well take you to places that you would otherwise never go - not unlike following Argyle to away games, really. I also appreciate that the time spent on the shoreline/boat/riverbank etc gives a person time to think, relax, have a looksee at what else is going on (and there's usually all sorts if you give it a bit of a chance to unfold and pay attention as it does). So I can see a lot going for it before there's even the thrill of catching something but is that really sport? Have you beaten a fish? Is that the opponent or is the idea to catch more than people you compete against but this doesn't apply to the vast majority of fishing trips so it isn't usually that.

Putting a fish back once it has been landed strikes me as bizarre. If you aren't planning to eat it then why bother to catch it in the first place?

As for under-sized fish... anglers are hardly the problem here, are they? The few fish they take is a vanishingly small percentage compared to the number being sold in any Spanish market for a start and I suspect that environmental conditions are far more severe in their impact.

"I don't understand fishing" says people who don't fish, probably never will.

I've been fishing many times says someone who has fished plenty and probably will again.

One half of my family were fishing folk, right on Mousehole harbour, for generations. We were told everything there is to know about fishing.. constantly #untilourearshurt
They knew what was coming, having experienced the herring crash, so they hooked up with some Scillonians and decided to go into the leisure/provisions boat business. Ferries and fishing trips for the land-locked visitors.

"Bass angling generates more income to the economy and takes far fewer fish. Surely its now time to make the bass fishery recreation only."

The logic is that at the current rate of exploitation then Bass will go like he North Sea Herring, Sand Eel and Cod, Blue fin Tuna etc, not enough to catch or keep the stock alive.

Sport/ recreational catches, limited and monitored plus reserves and no take zones, perhaps we can rebuild the stock.

The Channel is full of trawlers, pair trawlers and drift netters decimating the stock, plus beamers decimating the sea bed and habitat.

Bass are very slow growing and like all predators, man included, build up heavy metals as they grow. The bigger/ older the fish the more poisonous it is.

I like catching Bass, but I would much rather eat a Mackerel, or two.

As I said, I could politically broaden the discussion into micro/macro little man/big boy food production thing, but it goes nowhere. As an instance, mass fishing has always decimated stocks, just like the post WW2 large scale soil destroying NPK oil industry agriculture practice. Neither is sustainable in the long term. Technology is of course a problem and when it dances with excess profit, it needs to be reined in, we all agree that. It's just then WHO gets the fishing rights, and whether they do it sustainably. I believe those locals who make a living from the sea should have first dibs, and not indulgent day trippers, end of. It's insulting, like allowing incomers second homes while enjoying rate rebates. It's not on, it's not communally and locally sustainable, let alone "fair". If that's political dogma, then so be it.
Why not just fish for something you want to eat ? And if not, there's plenty of leisure sport with clay pigeons, for those finely tuned "sportsmen" who like to pit their wits against a flying phenomena with a scatter gun approach, but not to eat.  I grow vegetables, but I don't waste my time growing food I don't eat.
Food is a serious business, not a sport. Take up following a football club.
Down at Newlyn, there's a lovely spot owned by the harbour authority, that is used mainly by the odd overnight camper to sleep for free, and the local line fisherman to do his/her thing, for free. That's all there needs to be. The local rod man and the local boats co exist. Well, unless we talk Stevenson.

Sustainable fishing, line caught fish are often much better quality.

Ban monofilament nets, they kill everything and fish for ever when lost or abandoned.

Food is a serious business, but if that food disappears then it won't matter who owns the right to catch it.

I really don't worry if I don't catch a fish, just sitting by the sea, wading in a trout stream or watching the water is enough for me.

Firstly sorry to Franny D I didn't know you were a fisherman but there you go the point about people who don't fish not understanding us that do still stands IMO.
As for not fishing for sport Hawks, why not? What difference does it make whether people choose to go to footy, the pub or a brothel? Personally I fish to catch some food, important but not essential to the overall enjoyment of the day, to see and spend time in a beautiful place is paramount. I guess you're saying that when you walk along the coast that's fine but if I stop to fish on that same walk that's wrong and you should save that fish for the locals. You sound like one of those surfers that gets arsey if not shown enough respect at their local break, manners and etiquette apply obviously but no one has first dibs on any wave or any fish just because they live a bit closer to it than I do.
As for beam trawlers, pair trawlers yeh feck them and the united nations of fishermen that inhabit our waters. If you want to see fish go to a country that controls its own fisheries, Canada, America, Iceland and they don't let anybody else in there and they have waters teeming with fish. My uncle was a commercial fisherman as we're loads of my extended family, it's in the blood, I wanted to go fishing when I left school and my uncle talked me out of it, he said its for the big boys now to Hoover up the rest of the fish and there will be feck all left for the likes of us. How right he was.

As I said Iggy, the wider food politics is a huge subject. I am certainly  no fan of beam trawlers and big factory boats doing a seafaring Tescos, grabbing everything. They should be banned. But not other smaller boats set up differently. If you're talking anti EU country things, I can't be arsed with that, as it gets into UKIP territory that isn't my fight.
My main beef was about some angler saying that bass should be left to the anglers only. Sorry, I disagree and see that as "posh" elitism. Go down that road, and there will be a monetary fee and licence to pay for any sort of rod coast fishing anywhere. A better way has to be found than that sort of nonsense.

And I certainly don't mange to eat all the veg I grow. I don't have the guilt gene, or the need, and I too do it to be out in nature etc. But shooting or fishing for sport ? if that's one's bag, at least eat it or give it to someone else to eat. I know a couple guys who rear and then run shoots up your way. They haven't a lot of time for people who pop down from London, kill, but don't want the birds. They like their dosh though.

I'd agree with most of that especially the rod licence, they tried that on a while ago, they wrote to all anglers on their data base eg. Everybody who has ever bought a rod licence, they asked our feelings on having a sea fishing licence? They did say about how much money would be poured back into making the sea a much better family day experience but I forget the figures. I replied that anybody hassling me when I'm having a fish would end up in with said fishes I was by no means the only one that replied that way. Luckily people power worked that time.
As for shooting for sport that's something I don't get as a pot hunter myself. I don't agree with the numbers of birds kept on shoots or the amount shot in a day but these days pretty well all the birds shot are sold and eaten. Personally I would rather eat a free range pheasant than an intensively reared chicken or shed reared fat free porker, in fact I haven't eaten any off that for thirty years after having to work in a poultry shed. Personally I'd trim the wings of the big shoots just from a purely class war angle than the welfare point of view.

As well as the obvious food aspect, a lot of people will fish purely for pleasure as much as for the sport of it. A helluva lot more will fish as a legitimate recreational escape from 'er indoors.

I don't fish nearly as much as I did 15-20 years ago, but there are few things in life I used to enjoy more, than being perched up high at The Stack at Morgan Porth at last light with the sun setting, pulling in the odd mackerel while waiting for darkness and hearing your ratchet scream off after a small-eyed Ray has snaffled you live sand eel.

Happy days.

Caught a bagful of Mackerel off the rocks in north Cornwall the other day. Lots of sprats showing with the fish right close in including several good sized bass. Unforch I'd picked up my river spinning box instead of my box of jellies and plugs. Tried a small eddy eel had a small bass but the eddy was getting mobbed by Garfish although they wouldn't take it just nip the body and pull it down the hook, I had five gar around it at one time, never seen so many of them. Must go back more suitably armed.

A good friend of mine has been lining outside of Noss for the last week. Lots of unusual naval shipping activity. Sounds like preparations have started.

Hooked a good mullet, 3 ~ 4lb in Soton on Sunday, hanging around the overboard discharges.

seadog wrote:

Sustainable fishing, line caught fish are often much better quality.

Ban monofilament nets, they kill everything and fish for ever when lost or abandoned.

Mono netting gets quite an unfair press. After lining it is by far the most selective method of fishing, take sole netting for example. Dover soles within a specific size range are virtually all that is caught by those nets & undersized fish of a target species are hardly ever caught by any mono nets.

Ghost fishing by lost nets is also something of a myth. Most lost nets will very quickly be rolled up by tidal & weather movement (hence the reason no netters work during spring tides) & equally quickly be overcome by marine growth to become just a harmless clump overcome by weed. Granted a lost wreck net may last a little longer before breaking up but rapid marine growth ensures it can be seen by fish who then avoid it.

Whatever method used its the scale that's the problem. Me and my uncle used to til a gill net for "bass" in the estuaries, we only used 100m of net and would only lay it for one tide. It would be gone by daylight so no one saw it.