In favour of a break – just not this one!

I WRITE in response to Keith Arthur’s comments on the closed season (December 27 issue).

Keith describes people who want it abolished or changed as ‘selfish’.

Well, I am one of those people who doesn’t want it abolishing altogether, but I would definitely like it to be changed.

This season I fished our club water on the first day of the season – June 16 – and caught a chub laden with spawn.

Days before, when I was prebaiting a few swims, there were fish all over the shallows and gravels, showing no interest in me being loud and brash never mind the bait I was distributing, they were spawning that aggressively. Would I have been selfish fishing for them if there was no closed season?

I record weather as part of my job as a greenkeeper and in April 2017 there were three days when the temperature didn’t rise above 4ºC, after several weeks of a maximum of 8º C. I’m no scientist, but having read that fish need water temperatures of 14ºC and upwards to spawn, our rivers were nowhere near that.

In view of these observations, I think clubs should choose their own closed season but of a minimum of, say, six weeks.

Failing that, I’d say all of June and July should be a mandatory closed season across the country.

I want to protect the rivers as much as anyone else, but the current dates are wrong and not helping fish or anglers. Danny Millar, Knaresborough