Fishing The Fly Scotland Forum

Ben Dixon

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #15 on: 26/01/2009 at 23:44 »
Rob, I know, dont give me any encouragement to get on my high horse  :z4  I do enjoy my salmon fishing but my passion is for big brown things with spots and particularly those that live in our rivers!!

Totally agree with Iains point about the sea trout and, in general, I think it is slightly wrong that we are not allowed to fish on a Sunday.  In this day & age where Britain is trying to put over a message of inclusion and cultural unity it seems wrong that we are not permitted to fish on a Sunday.  It is the one day off that the majority of the population are guaranteed and not everyone uses or wants to use that day to go to church however, the flipside to this is that those who work on the river also deserve one guaranteed day off and the fact that there is no fishing on Sunday allows those people some much deserved time off.

I would be happy to pay for a license providing that any revenue generated was used directly to benefit the rivers and by that I mean river systems as an entirety and all the things that any given system supports.  Be that trout, salmon, sticklebacks, roach or anything else.
A license for a particular system or group of systems within close proximity that is available at all ticket outlets and lasts for a season may work, I would have no problem paying £5 each to fish the Don, Dee or Annan once a year provided it was put to good use.  I would have more faith that it would be if it was paid to a local trustee rather than to a government oganisation that looked after all waterways.  Other users of our waterways should also have to contribute something towards maintainance & research but that is a whole other issue. 
I would not like to see a system such as that in place in England where obvious problems are allowed to continue and  considerable funds oftem seem to be used up by bureaucratic wranglings and repeated surveys of the same thing.

Cheers

Ben

Magnus Angus

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #16 on: 27/01/2009 at 00:30 »
Quote
Then you have the issue of a protection order and some owners expecting all the benefits it brings, but then ignoring the small print such as "allowing fair access to the river". I am thinking of some beats that refuse to allow trout fishing or price it so high that they exclude folk, directly against the protection order.

Whole other topic, but slowly slowly catchey monkey  wink Things are progressing on elements of that front  Cool dude

Good point Rob - I wonder if many folk know what protection orders are all about.

Quote
How they could manage to Tax that though would remain to be seen.

They could start like this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5375688.ece

Rob Brownfield

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #17 on: 27/01/2009 at 08:47 »
All the feedback from south of the border appears to suggest that the rod licence system has not been a great success there :z6

Mike, I actually think it depends where abouts you live and what you fish for to tell the truth, and this is where it all falls down in my opinion.

In theory England and Wales pays into a big pot of money. This funds research in fishery management, supplies advice to clubs, stocking of waters, pollution monitoring and resolution and bailiffs to patrol. All very good stuff that should cover the waters fairly.

Take the Thames as an example of what many feel as being the misuse of funds. The river supports a HUGE population of coarse anglers and very very few Salmon anglers, yet the amount of salmon stocked into the Thames far outweighs the contribution made by the salmon anglers via the license system. This is seen as totally unfair by the clubs and private individuals that run the fishing on the Thames.

In the "old days" each water authority had its own license system and the money generated went straight back into local regions...great idea, but if you lived as i did on the border of a county or two, you had to buy several licenses to fish local waters. In my case Thames, Essex and Hertfordshire waters.

There are good points to the system. The EA have stepped up patrols on the Fens to try and stop the fish poaching thats going on by migrant workers, stocked the river Wandle in London after it was polluted by Thames Water  :mad, and stock and advise many waters all over England and Wales and have several fish farms supplying quality health checked fish. All very worth while!

A license in Scotland? I doubt it would work to tell the truth. I think in principle its a great idea, a pooling of resources to help protect and nurture the fishing, but, there are two many old duffers in positions of "power" who would be paranoid about "someone else" possibly having a say on what they can and cannot do. I also think an unfair emphasis is put on Salmon stocks to the detriment of Brown Trout, Grayling and other fish species and i think a national license would have to address this, much to the distaste of some riperian owners.


Hamish Young

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #18 on: 27/01/2009 at 09:03 »
Some interesting thoughts in there Rob, but the observation I would make about your Thames comments might alienate you a smidgen  :wink

The Thames was once a prolific Salmon and Sea Trout river and what the EA are doing now is a continuation of the NRA work or re-establishing salmon in the Thames following the huge clean up that the river basin has been enjoying since the 1970's. This is work that EA is bound to continue, if the Coarse species had been in similar catastrophic decline then they would have been attended to in the same thorough manner.

And that brings one of the issues about the scheme, someone will always bitch and moan that 'their' species is being ignored by those who have a responsibility to care for the water and the fish therein. It's like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, there's no pleasing all of the people all of the time.

I have argued the case on this forum and elsewhere long enough for a Scottish Rod Licence, even a voluntary one, with funds accrued going to a number of projects across the country - projects 'lobby' for the funds. With my rose tinted specs firmly on I see that sort of scheme working in Scotland. To formalise a rod licence scheme in Scotland would require (if following the models south of the border) so many revisions to Scottish Law and a complete re-arrangement of how our rivers are managed as to make it a highly unlikely proposition.

Too much like hard work  :roll




Rob Brownfield

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #19 on: 27/01/2009 at 12:56 »
Some interesting thoughts in there Rob, but the observation I would make about your Thames comments might alienate you a smidgen  :wink

The Thames was once a prolific Salmon and Sea Trout river and what the EA are doing now is a continuation of the NRA work or re-establishing salmon in the Thames following the huge clean up that the river basin has been enjoying since the 1970's. This is work that EA is bound to continue, if the Coarse species had been in similar catastrophic decline then they would have been attended to in the same thorough manner.

Of course (coarse ;)) you are correct in what you say, the Thames did indeed hold Salmon and Trout in years gone by. My concern though is that the river has changed beyond all recognition and that although clean, is not suitable to sustain Salmon...and thus its a waste of money trying to get it too. The river is warmer, slower flowing and different to what it was some 400 years ago.

This makes interesting reading on the subject.. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/article701447.ece

I think that if its a straight forward case of the Salmon being wiped out by say pollution, then yes, re-introduce..but the Thames quite simply is no longer a Salmon river...i believe :)

As for being alienated..nowt new there...I have never felt a certain fish should take precidence over all other things in the river ;) including other fish, animals and even people :)

Barry Robertson

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #20 on: 27/01/2009 at 12:59 »
It amazes me how some people know so much on this subject, not really helpfull in a pub quiz but makes for some intresting reading  :z16 :z16

Jim Doyle

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #21 on: 27/01/2009 at 17:35 »
Lets look closer to home, loch leven once held salmon and char.  There is a duty on governing bodies to maintain salmon access to their head waters. When a report about the state of the river leven was produced it was hailed as inovative and the way forward , when it was costed and the responsabilities of various paper mills and distilleries pointed out it was quickly shelved.    jim

Rob Brownfield

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #22 on: 28/01/2009 at 08:34 »
Lets look closer to home, loch leven once held salmon and char.  There is a duty on governing bodies to maintain salmon access to their head waters. When a report about the state of the river leven was produced it was hailed as inovative and the way forward , when it was costed and the responsabilities of various paper mills and distilleries pointed out it was quickly shelved.    jim

On the flip side, the Spey is only such a clean river because of the Whisky industry...so industry can infact be good ;)

Andy Wren

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #23 on: 28/01/2009 at 09:23 »
All the feedback from south of the border appears to suggest that the rod licence system has not been a great success there :z6

Best wishes
Mike

Mike ,
most English /Welsh fisherfolk are not very happy with what we get for our licence ,especially those of us on salmon seatrout licences which are heading for £70 ,bad for me as Boy has turned 16 and has too pay full wack!
Situation is much improved from my early fishing days when we had to have local licences ,some seasons would have a thames water,southern water,Anglian water and a severn trent licence.there were at least four more areas but they did not get visited by me !

As to the Thames not being a suitable river for salmon ,I think with a push from some hatchery fish they could be back with a vengance .
rumour mill has it that some of the weir pools have held a reasonable number this season just gone !Mick Bell and I have plans to investigate this come tthe summer !

Rob Brownfield

Re: River fishing on Sundays?
« Reply #24 on: 28/01/2009 at 13:06 »
As to the Thames not being a suitable river for salmon ,I think with a push from some hatchery fish they could be back with a vengance .
rumour mill has it that some of the weir pools have held a reasonable number this season just gone !Mick Bell and I have plans to investigate this come tthe summer !

Did you have a scan of that article I posted...there "appears" to be no sustainable salmon stocks in the Thames system, despite the release of millions of parr and fry. Certainly a few Salmon have been taken by fellow Pikers but they have all been stocked fish (adipose removed).

The latter part of this article makes interesting but sad reading... http://residents-association.com/tdt40/upstream_struggle.php

"Now, 29 years and £6 million later, the project is not dead, but its future lies in the balance. The latest - and possibly last - attempt to save the salmon lies far upstream of Thames Ditton, in a stretch of the Kennet between Newbury and Hungerford. "

and

"Alas, first signs have again proved disappointing. "It's been incredibly disappointing," Darryl Clifton-Dey, who runs the project for the Environment Agency (EA), said. "There is still time for a turnaround. In 2003 we thought we were getting there. We tracked fish right back to the River Kennet, where we had put them in as juveniles. But we don't know if they actually did the business."

29 years of trying and some £4m pounds, much of it from rod licence payers seems a bit of a "flogging a dead horse" kind of project....I would welcome others views on this...


Don't get me wrong, it would be wonderful to see salmon once more leaping the weirs, but at what cost to the Licence fee payer?

 




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