As I sit and start to write this in my front room it’s thirteen hours to go from the start of the New Year and at such time it is customary to take a nostalgic look back at the year just gone and take a punt at what may happen in the year to come.
However, I don’t really deal with nostalgia that much, especially in angling related matters so instead I am going to take a look at issues and events, both personal and national, that are going to be issues going backwards and forwards.
Otters
Our furry friends have never been far from the message boards and magazine headlines for much of 2011 and I don’t see this being any different in 2012. Love them or hate them otters do have a place in this country and to say they disappeared for completely natural reasons is denying the obvious in much the same way as following a mass release programme and hoping that some will stick.
Personally I find it staggering that one of our most charismatic mammals is now so vilified by so many, but the staggering mismanagement of re-introducing or re-building otter numbers has led to a situation where there is so much mistrust on both sides finding common ground to build upon may prove to be impossible.
In an ideal world what really should have happened is that every otter re-introduction should only have been made where there was suitable habitat for those creatures to survive and flourish, without huge detriment to those waters in the vicinity of where they were introduced.
As anglers though we also have to accept that where there are otters there are going to be fish eaten and on occasions there are times when these will be fish we would dearly love to catch. So what do we do going forward?
The obvious answer to this is that in the very first place all those parties with a vested interest need to get together and they need to be able to see each other’s point of view, possibly the hardest part of all. Everyone needs to take a hard look at themselves here because anglers are not in anyway blameless when it comes to messing with nature. After all there are numbers of fish swimming in our waters that have no right to be there and a number of waters have turned from natural waters, supporting a myriad of life, to carp-stuffed puddles with very limited ecologies. Providing that common ground can be found I would then implement the following:
1) All otter re-introductions to be suspended for the next ten years.
2) Impact studies to be conducted upon those waters that have been deemed to have been ‘ottered’ to destruction and otters with territories in that area to be tagged to ascertain their movements and feeding habits.
3) Angling clubs and societies to examine five years’ worth of catch reports, backed by acoustic surveying by the EA, to verify numbers and movements of fish.
4) No further re-introduction to any catchment without a properly conducted impact survey on both the rivers and local waters that would fall within an adult dog otter’s territory.
5) No forced introduction to any catchment where otters have failed to take a hold within the ten year study period.
Managed properly otters can happily co-exist with anglers I am sure, but there needs to be give and take by both parties and personally I see the hardest part of selling any deal is making it stick with the carp angling fraternity.
Thanks, in main, to carp anglers’ desire to name every fish they are almost humanising the species and every death is looked upon as a tragedy, with some fish even getting headstones and funerals. Quite frankly the fact that no carp angler can see that this could be potentially disastrous to angling is beyond me. How can you square the circle by saying that you care for these fish like pets, name them and treat them with reverence, whilst in the same breath you want to stick a hook in them and haul them from their natural environment? It makes no sense to most within angling and absolutely none at all to non-anglers. Carp anglers are going to have to accept that ‘Bertie’, ‘Heather’ or ‘Fred are also a part of the food chain and may fall victim to an otter – that is nature in the raw.
Eastern European anglers
Probably the most contentious issue in UK angling at the moment and one that’s even more difficult to solve. After all an otter cannot be made to change its behaviour as it does what it does to survive, EE anglers do not.
You can make all the logical reasons and threaten all of the punishments in the world but if some anglers are not willing to tow the line nothing you can do will change this and undoubtedly there are numbers of anglers that are that way inclined.
What is given fewer headlines though are the large numbers of Eastern European anglers that are actually practising catch and release and are doing their best to get their fellow countrymen to do the same. There is much that we can learn from these guys, even to the extent of improving our own angling, but definitely when it comes to the problem of them taking fish for the pot. After all who knows the mentality better than those who have a similar heritage?
Instead we had the Angling Trust backed knee-jerk reaction of changes to the Freshwater and Fisheries Act and a whole load of rules that few people actually know about and that are unenforceable because the EA doesn’t have the money to provide enough bailiffs and sold sections of angling down the river without a second thought.
Yes, despite the fact that your target species has been here over 100 years, long enough for a mammal to become naturalised if not native, if you’re a catfish angler or zander angler then tough shit – your target species can be culled with impunity – and with the Angling Trust’s approval.
Hence the reason why I will never join the Angling Trust.
They call to unite anglers but then completely exclude a large number because they were completely unwilling to take on DEFRA, mainly I feel because they jumped into bed with them on carp importation and disease etc. and don’t want to rock the boat on what is obviously a no-brainer to offer cats and zeds the same protection as other species.
Maybe, just maybe, if the angling media focussed this year on pro-EE articles and the positives that they bring to the sport rather than all the negatives then we might start to get somewhere, but I won’t be holding my breath.
So what then of this year?
Well supposedly 2012 will end early as it’s the year that the world will end but providing that it does run its entirety then I can see it being a pretty good one both for the short and long term.
With the mild winter we have had so far and with little in the way of rain and therefore flooding, the fry recruitment for this year should be very good, in fact it could very well be a bumper year. Only a few days ago I was fishing my local river and the fry shoals had to be seen to be believed. The shoal easily covered 100 yards of river from one side to the other and it was pretty much fish soup, if half of that lot reach maturity it will be a hell of a lot of roach for the next few years.
I also think that a few records could be under threat this year with perch, pike, zander and bream those most under pressure, with possibly the three predatory species the most vulnerable of the lot.
With Whykeham Lakes shaking the pike record last year if that fish is still alive, and so far it hasn’t been caught to prove it is, then it would certainly be a contender as it was so close last year but a fish of that size is naturally likely to be an old one and none of us are immortal.
The zander record has also been under pressure, almost from the moment that it was set and at 21lb and a bit there is certainly room for more to come; after all 25lb and above is the record for a lot of the continental countries that have zander and over the last few winters there have been a few fish caught around the 20lb mark that at the right time could eclipse the current best.
With a warmish winter, like we are having, and a mild spring we could see a fish to beat the current mark and the most likely candidate is the River Severn but don’t write the Fens off just yet. Changes to the Relief Channel which allow for more and better access and the current boom in silver fish species there and throughout the Fens opens up the possibility that the Fens may yet take back their crown, I for one certainly hope so!
Finally the perch. The perch record seems to go every year at the moment but I think we could just be coming to the end of the perch boom time that we have enjoyed over the last ten years or more. In my neck of the woods at least, where big perch were pretty common and catching a 2lb fish a pretty easy target, they are certainly thinner on the ground than they were. Whether this is repeated across the country I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that this is the beginning of the end of the perch boom, but as the numbers drop, so the chance of a huge fish increases as the competition for food decreases.
Time will tell all but whilst we await the answers may I wish all of you a belated happy New Year, both on the bank and away from it, and, as usual, I shall be here to chart my highs and lows throughout the year.
