KEYBOARD WARRIORS, LET’S GET A FEW THINGS STRAIGHT!
Here’s my stance on predators, graft, and the closed season
FOLLOWING an Angling Trust Facebook post showing a video I made to promote that body, there were a few misinformed posts flying about that I would like to address here and now.
First of all, I don’t take and never have taken a single penny from the Angling Trust. I donate my time and ancillary costs absolutely free of charge. I have never received any favours, freebies or other benefits because of my membership, which I pay by direct debit every year.
Second, I have never said otters or other predators have no impact on rivers. I was a very active campaigner, and still am, against cormorants because there are things that can be done to protect our waters against them.
Many of those things have been done, all via the Angling Trust’s work with authorities whose job is to manage our wildlife.
Otters are a different matter. They are a native species whose numbers have increased naturally since they were protected, and something over 100 individuals were released from captive breeding over several years, the majority of those in Yorkshire.
It is a success story that angling is still to come to terms with. The Angling Trust has done remarkably well, along with others, to negotiate for them to be removed from fenced fisheries.
Finally, my position on the current closed season on rivers is absolutely clear.
If some science could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there would be no detrimental impact on fish stocks, I would support its abolition.
Circumstantial evidence is that abolition would have a hugely detrimental impact. When lots of English coarse anglers used to descend on the river systems of Ireland and Denmark in April and May, certainly bream got bigger but numbers of them reduced and roach... well, what weights of roach are now caught on Lough Erne, for example?
That’s where I stand for the purposes of the keyboard warriors!