OUR BLUEFIN TUNA FISHING COULD BE SECOND TO NONE!
Why must we look on as France and Spain plunder stocks?
HERE is an air of mystery surrounding the bluefin tuna’s reappearance in UK waters.
TI am convinced that the overthrow of Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi is the major reason for the increase in numbers. His regime trapped and netted hundreds of thousands of bluefins, storing and feeding them in huge net compounds right through the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas,
Bluefins are able to adjust their body temperatures to visit temperate, even chilly, waters and in recent times a fishery has been created off the west coast of Ireland.
It wasn’t long after those fish appeared that I saw my first tuna off the Welsh coast during a day’s sharking with Andrew Alsop.
A few weeks ago my old pal and former Angling Times man Greg Whitehead sent me some video from Guernsey showing a stupendous school of massive bluefins that had been established for weeks... and this, apparently, is only one of several.
What I can’t understand is why we can’t just catch and release them. France and Spain have quotas and take fish from the very shoals we can’t aim a hook at – it’s madness.
Hopefully a new campaign to allow a licensed recreational catch-and-release fishery will enable the UK to be in a position to invite foreign anglers here for some fishing that, on current levels, will be at the very least the equal of anything in the world.