‘From hook to cook’ concept has its dangers
LAST weekend saw the tuna anglers take to the southern ocean and the good conditions that prevailed blessed them for a change.
The wind conditions are a big factor preventing these craft from venturing out to the sort of distances required to locate these monster fish that have eluded them for some time now.
The boats left from the Port of St Francis and went as far as the 25 nautical mile mark, where the water is about 200m deep.
Ross Spowart caught two tuna on his boat and the biggest – photographed – is a whopper of 82kg.
Five boats took the opportunity of capitalising on the excellent conditions and were almost all rewarded with fish – six – mostly in the 30 to 40kg size.
The current has moved a little closer to the coast and the warmer water is now easier to reach distance-wise. The wind must just play its part in the weeks to come!
Onto another subject, a phrase that has surfaced of late in the endeavour to assist small-scale anglers is “from the hook to the cook”.
The concept is to get a better quality product to the end user; however I see alarm bells ringing here when I think that the regulation of daily catch limits and permit conditions cannot be easily enforced this way. Though it does allow for a quicker delivery system, it will open the door for others to simply sell their catches under the auspices of smallscale fishers.
The buyers, too, will accept any fresh product whether monitored or not. WAYNE RUDMAN
A whole new can of worms will be opened. Law enforcement is cut to the bone already and these new ideas make their task even more difficult. Only time will tell.
With angling being both livelihood and sport it can present a vast conflict of interests, not so much between the commercial and sports anglers but rather between the small-scale fishers and sport anglers, as they will compete for the same space and species with the one side able to trade and the other not.
Small-scale fishery is expected to grow by those demanding access (for the way of life), leaving the sport angler even more trampled.
The closure of vehicle access to the coastal high water mark has already robbed the anglers of turf to angle. Perhaps now is the time to re-think the coastal zone access.
I am not suggesting a free-forall, but believe a well-thought out plan can provide better for the sport angler at the end of the day.
The weather for today sees a southerly wind turning easterly at dusk and prevailing throughout tomorrow, increasing in intensity during this period and being rather strong by sunset. High tide is at 9.38am and we experience a neap tide, with today being the first quarter moon phase.
On Sunday, a northerly wind will swing easterly through southerly and, by nightfall, a westerly will prevail. The water temperature is slightly warmer at almost 18°C in the bay at present.
My thoughts are that a later afternoon cast might surprise with a fish or two on Sunday.