Boat Angling and Conservation

[Ell]

This has been bothering me for a while now, bear with me (no I\'m not typing naked) a bit of background first. Once a killer of anything, a young kid with fields, an airgun and no guidance or supervision. Shot owt that moved smaller than a goat wether it flew or not. Premieval instinct, man the hunter something like that in my child\'s mind, my mates were exactly the same. Taken fishing with me dad in the 70\'s when I believe I am right in saying, the general perception was there were plenty more fish in the sea, certainly plenty more to be caught from the shore. Given proper guidance on respect for the countryside, how to handle fish, workings of the food chain etc. Then left home and went all ultra lefty, vegetarian, animal rights supporter (not activist, too busy fighting for the human cause ) no meat, anti-hunting and wouldn\'t fish on moral grounds (joke in there somewhere... \"where\'d you catch that?\" \"On the moral ground just off St. Mary\'s\" Grew up a bit, ditched a few of my more bigotted beliefs but kept the fundementals.

What I\'m leading up to is.......... I am beginning to find it difficult to justify keeping fish over a certain size. There are a number being captured this season, in fact in terms of HSF\'s this year seems to be a good \'un. As we all know though this is not indicative of a general trend, fish stocks are depleting, Cod and many other species are in deep trouble the doo doo has well and truly hit the fan. I think it may be an idea to have a self imposed upper limit on what we keep (Cod and Ling in particular) Mant times the words Perfect for the pan or pansize are used and I suggest anything not should be photographed and returned. I have seen a few good fish this year and after the excitement of hunting them down, tempting them to the hook and playing and boating them it saddens me to see some of these long term wreck residents lying discoloured in a fish box. In no way am I suggesting to keep these fish is WRONG, I\'m just not sure wether it is RIGHT. An upper limit as a ball park figure to me would be 7-8lbs. I understand that whatever efforts sport anglers make can be undone in a blink of the eye by a commercial boat but 2 wrongs never made a right in me dads book and I\'ll go with that.

 

[Ell]

Written by a man still waiting for his first doubler, am I going to cop some flack

 

[mark]

thought along these lines for a while. Personally I\'d sooner have 2 4lb fish than 1 8lb if its for the pot.

on a conservation note, as to where we might end up, my neighbour just returned from 3 weeks saling around the bay of biscay, at sea all but 3 days, fished several hours each day, wrecks, reefs, flats, sandbanks, in fact anywhere that should look \'canny\' according to accepted fishing wisdom. catch results for 3 weeks - 1 mackeral (it was apperntly 2 but he dropped on and it went over board after he killed it and spent ages trying to fish it out again with a net!)

ashore and visiting a fish mongers he was appaled by what he saw and ended up with a bit of a situation with the fishmonger, as he wasn\'t aware he spoke english and heard everything they said. Average size of fish on sale: whiting 6\", asked for dover sole, half a kilo (ie a lb) got 5 fish! and so on and so forth. basically the spanish have eaten all the fish. on the harbour walls, the target species for shore anglers is sardines, agood day might see a dozen being caught per angler. Soddin sardines!

the moral I suppsoe is that the big fish make little fish. no big fish, then soon there\'ll be nee little fish.

my wholly unscientific opinion says, that id a little fish has managed to survive the struggle and avoid tonys pirks long enough to be a big fish, surely the genes of that fish ought to be protected and allowed to pass on in the hope that all the little fish will have a better chance to grow up like daddy.

the hunter/killer instict of youth were much in evidence last week when I took finn(5) out on the boat. no sooner had he dropped over the side tthan he was repleat with three fair sized mackeral. he thoroughly enjoyed the struccle and when I swung them onboard for him, and as they flapped about merrily around him, all he could scream was \" kill em kill em\" until they had been subdue to the fish box. I didn\'t know he had it in him

 

[TC]

Oi :exclam: :exclam:

 

[Davyred]

Makes sense Ell, something, to tell you the truth, I hadn\'t thought about much.

 

[mark]

just flicking through some old sea angler mags this morning, and this thread came back to mind. Have a look at the pictures for the \"catch and release\" feature each month. The Idea being ccatch a fish, take a piccy for the mag, release the fish and maybe win a prize. Found it both funny and annoying how many photos there have been for \'catch and release\" that have been taken in peoples kitchens/gardens/garages etc. I can only assume they have a very big marine fish tank that they have released there catch into, or perhaps, as where the fish are releasesd isn\'t strictly specified in the rules, releasing them into your freezer counts

 

[CODHEAD]

ell,
most bigger fish ive had have always been in bad nick look on the home page at the 21IB cod i had,also how can you put a ling back if the swim bladder goes .i think the smaller fish are our future but who knows you hear so much.i dont mind putting good condition fish back .i wonder wot age they are when they start to mate and how old they are when they stop.

gary

 

[jason]

I agree with you there gary a lot of the bigger fish i have seen have been in poor state of health and all of the 5-8lb fish earlier this year have been in very good health full of sperm and eggs. The perfect pan size i believe are the spawning few year old fish of this weight. So all you can really do is only take the ones that you know will be eaten whilst fresh (i learnt a few seasons ago about over stocking the freezer).

 

[Les]

hi ell,

i\'m kind of with you on this one mate, in the last 2 trips i have had with my boys we have had probably over 100 fish, cod, ling, pollack, not including mackerel for bait, out of these fish we have kept maybe 15-18 codling and ling, the ling were kept because they were shagged after getting caught in 200+ft of water, all the codling we kept were in the 2-3lb size except 1 fish of 8lb, this fish had so many worms in it i refused to let anyone in my family eat it so it went into the freezer for my mate tony to sell in his restaraunt

on saturday we put back probably 20 codling between 4 and 6lb only keeping some of the 2-3lbers, and about 20 odd pollack between 3-6lb, this was possible because we caught them in 35-50 feet of water, fish caught in 100+ft are usually knacked unless you bring them in slowly, then sometimes they get back down.

so what i think i\'m saying is, if you CAN return fish do so, but if you can\'t don\'t feel guilty about it unless you waste them by putting them in a poly bag to cook in the sun, or catch so many you can\'t even give them away and end up binning them

les

 

[CODHEAD]

les wares this restarant lol

 

[gogs]

Totally agree with you on that one Ell,out of my last dozen boat trips i have kept no fish any bigger than 3lb and even then i have only kept about ten alltold.same with my shore fishing nowadays i release nearly all my fish when pleasure fishing,unfortunatly the matches i fish are all the rover type matches which encourage the keeping of fish ie wrasse ,scorps rockling etc i think these fish should all be excluded and only edible fish allowed to be weighted in,what do you think on that one?

 

[CODHEAD]

gogs thats a point about the fish u cant keep,also take the hartlepool comp if you got a good fish u have to weigh it in who would knock a grand back ,not me. i know a guy who eats wrasse the crack is they taste of crab

gary

 

[jethro18]

Me too Gary,,I usually only keep 1 or 2 myself but ask if anyone else wants the rest. If no one does then they go back irrespective of size. But as you say Who would forfeit a grand????

Jethro

 

[Les]

codhead,

the restaurant is in fife here in scotland, best food you\'ll ever eat, tony is a fantastic chef, just don\'t have the cod

BTW you catch a lot more larger fish than me and gogs by fishing deep wrecks, are these fish infested with worm the same or is this just a problem with inshore fish ie red cod from kelp are notorious bags of worms at any size, are 15-20lb wreck fish gunnelled with worms too

les

[Edited on 9/8/2004 by Les]

 

[CODHEAD]

its not so much worms in the bigger its the meat on the fish ect.i think the worms are from seal crap dont quote me on this but .ive had some good red cod killgrecon rosneath biggest off the shore 29IB in 1970 something, when i was boy ile never forget but


gary

 

[Les]

aye gary,

i\'ve heard the seal crap thing too, but i think its a myth, maybe the doc can shed a bit of light on this subject