Hi Mike
Instead of what you have "heard outside the hut", please try listening to what you are hearing from ordinary SDAA members "on the ground" who are simply trying to pull the Bervie Mouth out of the 14th century and into the 21st, by showing a minority sniggling (ie lawbreaking) element down there that the framework of salmon statute law which is applicable to anyone else, also applies to them!
Two well-meaning resident anglers actually tried to start up an Inverbervie Angling Association away back in February 1993, yet it sank without trace in the same year. Therein lies the SDAA's difficulty - there is a small hard core of fishers (I wouldn't necessarily call them anglers) who simply don't want their activities regulated, and are employing a multitude of excuses to keep it that way.....the latest being that residents don't want "outsiders" running their river. Pray tell, how many NE salmon beats nowadays are even owned by residents of bonny Scotland, far less Aberdeenshire?!
Apart from four Bervieites who happen to be members of the SDAA, I have yet to come across any anglers down there who have made any useful comment on this situation - hopefully there are plenty who are simply keeping their powder dry.
We received an unsolicited invitation back in 2003 from the Dee Board to run these rod fishings on their behalf as a responsible angling club which knows what it is about.........that same in-house expertise will almost certainly extend to our b-ggering off pretty sharpish if we don't find stakeholder support amongst the local populace, for free yet properly administered angling at the Bervie Mouth. Or if we attract unexpected criticism from the NE angling community for simply having the courage (rather scarce anywhere nowadays) to stick our head above the parapet in trying to weed out an overdue blight on the North-East's very own angling scene. We are not in the market for taking on any poisoned chalice.
To close on a lighter note while we await support rather than flak from the NE angling community for what the Dee Board and our SDAA are actually trying to accomplish, Lyall mentioned the right of Wrecking under the Royal Charter. The same fascinating antiquity also permits the burgesses of Inverbervie to "attack, arrest, imprison and punish, behead, hang, drown, and send into banishment all transgressors"......since we are not yet a Fundamentalist Moslem state, I do think that the local PF would at least raise an eyebrow at that.
