Paranoid ?

[ScottyJim]

Am I getting paranoid ? We’ve just had a reprieve from our political masters on a fishing licence citing that the poor fishing doesn’t warrant its current introduction. We’re arguing the commercial fleet is destroying the stocks. Yet I read on another NE blog, a catch report from Chieftain out of Whitby. It was one of their longer trips. An exceptional trip, or a normal trip, I don’t know. Cracking photos of good fish and plenty of them. So what’s wrong? One of the photos showed boxes of fillets on the deck with the caption “103 stone of fillets”. I ask you ,103 stone ,which as getting on for one and a half thousand pounds. So what was the weight of the fish, as caught in the round? 2000, 2500, 3000 pounds? How many fish did they need to keep ? If the government, the commercials, or anyone wanted ammunition to hit the RSA’s, then this is surely it. And what happened to the fillets? I suppose it all went into the freezer for their own use. Of course none of us would ever dream of selling the fish we catch, as we all know it’s illegal. As I said, it’s a cracking report, and I’m jealous as hell. I just wish they’d left out that one photo and its caption. I could then have lived in ignorance, and wished that I’d been there as well.

[gazzawill]

i think the report ment 1 .3 stone 103 stone of fish sounds like way to much mate ?

[krysb]

i think the report ment 1 .3 stone 103 stone of fish sounds like way to much mate ?

have a look on wsf boat section
pics speak a thousand words

looking at the boxes, 103 stone looks very probable

kb

[mark]

this one?

Chieftain Charters 5th June 2008 60 Hour Trip. - World Sea Fishing Forums

there's 5 boxes in the pic that must be getting on for hundred weight a box, plus if there's a load in the chiller as well

betcha at some point that thread gets used all over the place in the RSA licencing arguements.

seem to remember a news story somewhere about 10metre commercial quota for a whole year off the sussex coast a while back - 103 stone is actually a hell of a lot more than that

[gazzawill]

this kinda thing is gona be used against all of us at some point
posting the links ect aint gona help lol

my oppinion

[willywetegg]

So what do you suggest I do Gazzawill, remove the link and smack Mark's bare legs for posting it in the first place?

Your not an Ostrich are you, hiding your head in the sand? These things should be talked about not just hidden away. Does that mean we shouldn't be talking about skippers discarding hundreds of fish because their quota for that kind has run out and they are looking for something else? That would be double stamdards.

After all, your previous comment on the subject seems to say it all.

"i think the report ment 1 .3 stone 103 stone of fish sounds like way to much mate" ?

I don't think you would be wrong with that statement, but unfortunately you didn't mean it that way did you?

Jim.

[The Great Wallsendo]

Can Charters also have license to sell the boats catch? - coz I can't for one minute think that the lads will be going home with all that Cod

I'm not going to lambast them - at the end of the day they've prob fished pretty intensively for 2 and half days and the skipper is obviously worth his salt as he put them among the fish in the first place

I said in another thread that you can't really compare the Charter/Private Boats to the Commercials because all those fish caught are larger specimen sized fish and the juvenile (future) stock has not been touched

There has been NIL By catch, NIL wastage and (virtually) NIL damage to the Marine Environment - much rather fish were caught this way than trawling the sea bed for miles and miles leaving a wasteland in its wake

I must admit I'd wrestle with my conscience on this one - but if some of the fish are to be sold legally at the end of the trip then good for them

[mark]

So what do you suggest I do Gazzawill, remove the link and smack Mark's bare legs for posting it in the first place?

I usually have to pay for someone to do that

chieftain trips go a long long way offshore, 60 to 80 miles, dogger bank or beyond and ain't cheap - 3 to 400 quid I seem to recall, so a dozen or more anglers over 3 days pulled up 103 stone of fillets = 1400lbs or so, which in the round would be around 2000lb I'd guess. which is about 160lb of fish each, over 3 days, thats 50 odd lb each per day, which is probably around 10 or so fish.... which suddenly doesn't look a lot, and as pointed out caught in an environmentally responsible and selective manner.

I'd hazard a guess that that trip was an exceptional one for the chieftain in terms of numbers caught, as I've read other reports from it and never seen anything of that size before. in fact elsewhere in that thread there's guys saying that they'd be out on the chieftain before and only caught 2 cod

[ScottyJim]

I suppose Mark you can make figures tell you anything. If you wanted to look at it in another way. A 60 hour trip I believe is 2 days fishing and the rest steaming time there and back. (The report says Day 1 and Day 2). You assume twelve anglers for the boat for the weight total. I see three guys in the photo with the fillets, and the report says “One of our lads …. with the rest of the anglers …”. This might suggest that a group of three mates were being referred to. Thus doing the maths with your figures, 2000 lbs total catch over 2 days, 650 lbs per day per person, say 65 fish at an average of 5lbs. (I am hoping the 2,3 and 4 pounders went back). Really though, the figures are unimportant. The fact is that anglers are presenting, not just in black and white, but in glorious colour, the information that can do a lot of damage to our sport. We all know that this type of catch is a rarity, but “Joe Public”, politicians and the rest haven’t a clue. This could be presented by the anti-angler lobby as what happens all the time (We wish), and decisions made accordingly, to our severe detriment. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

[mark]

I suppose Mark you can make figures tell you anything. If you wanted to look at it in another way. A 60 hour trip I believe is 2 days fishing and the rest steaming time there and back. (The report says Day 1 and Day 2). You assume twelve anglers for the boat for the weight total. I see three guys in the photo with the fillets, and the report says “One of our lads …. with the rest of the anglers …”. This might suggest that a group of three mates were being referred to. Thus doing the maths with your figures, 2000 lbs total catch over 2 days, 650 lbs per day per person, say 65 fish at an average of 5lbs. (I am hoping the 2,3 and 4 pounders went back). Really though, the figures are unimportant. The fact is that anglers are presenting, not just in black and white, but in glorious colour, the information that can do a lot of damage to our sport. We all know that this type of catch is a rarity, but “Joe Public”, politicians and the rest haven’t a clue. This could be presented by the anti-angler lobby as what happens all the time (We wish), and decisions made accordingly, to our severe detriment. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

pretty much what I said above about the potential for it to be used against us. Figures/statistics can indeed be created to show anything. The lads will have paid a fair whack for that trip and obviously got there moneys worth in terms of enjoyment

to not show and tell of such a trip, or to deliberately withold or remove it smacks of censorship and secrecy which is far more dangerous IMHO. Silly season is upon us any day now and far more damaging is the mayhem that is going to be present on the piers for the next 2 or 3 months with the annual mackeral slaughter. A lot of shore anglers bemoan the boats that get out and take a good number of cod. here's a pic that is infinately more damaging to the sport than the cheiftain trip, taken last week on peterhead breakwater. mackeral in huge numbers just feet from the breakwater, the numpties in full slaughter mode, the result bags and bags of dead fish just kicked over the side because they didn't know when to stop.

[krysb]

absolutley disgusting,
what a waste, surely they could find a home for the fish, even if they were given to the potters for bait.
or even stop fishing for them when they got enough????


krysb

[The Great Wallsendo]

absolutley disgusting,
what a waste, surely they could find a home for the fish, even if they were given to the potters for bait.
or even stop fishing for them when they got enough????


krysb

They can't though - it's like a little switch in their head that says "Here Man if I catch hunnerts of these it meks us the best fisha ever and me Mam would be dead proud of us"...accents will change locally I'm sure this isn't just a North East affliction

[oldessox]

The problem with things like the fish mongers that infest our pier ends at macky time is there can be one or two of them , and hundreds of sensible conservation concious anglers fishing the same spot and who gets noticed?
The one or two scumbags that leave all their crap and kill fish to chuck in the bin.
Hundreds of anglers could have fished before them without ever being noticed , one group of chavs turn up with a couple of crates of cans and a few plastic bags to put their catch in , catch a boat load of macky , get drunk and just chuck everything they can't be bothered to carry over the side.
I believe the silent sensible majority outnumber the scumbags by a long long way , but the only ones to get noticed by Joe Public are the scum .
What we do about it I don't know , apart from pick up all their crap as wellas ours after we finish fishing and hope that's before too much of it gets noticed by anyone that's likely to get a bee in their bonnet about it and go about getting ALL aglers banned because of the few.
As for catching too many cod with rod and line , I've thought about this too recently , some scientists worked out that 90% of the fish live in 10% of the seas , until chartplotters and fishfinders became common place on angling boats I'd have said fish stocks were quite safe if only caught by rod and line .
These days I'm not so sure , read the catch reports from private boats just on this one site,add to that all those that don't report on sites , multiply that by the number of harbours and launch sites up and down the coast .....and the cod are getting a real hammering.
As I say , I'm not qualified to say what effect it has on the fish stocks , but the numbers are worrying.


Ray

[Codfather]

Not exactly on topic but ere goes anyway.

In my last catch report I mentioned the pair trawler's off Hartlepool.

These were two big commercial boats pulling a huge huge net between them and did so all day just off Hartlepool and coming withing just a few miles of the shore.

I'm pretty sure that this single day of pair trawling, accounted for more fish than all of the rod and line fishing in a whole season off Hartlepool.

Not to mention the damage that was done to the sea bed habitat that may take years to recover.

The catches taken by the chieften and other's surely can't compare to the damage done by the likes of this.

I'm sure if the media / government wanted to bad mouth rod and line sea anglers, they would find or make up as much bad publisity as they needed to brainwash people anyway..

As said before tho, their's a million different ways to look at things that can make them look good or bad.

[Red5]

I agree with Oldessox. Said it for years. We've all got to fish responsibly and these pictures hardly do anything for conservation.
We can all moan about the trawlers as much as we want but we also need to keep our house in order then we can show just how damaging commercial fishing is try and work for change to get these practices curtailed and hopefully stopped.
The positive aspect is, is that more of us are becoming politicised and we need to keep fighting to save our sport.
As for the macky bashers......