What is the matter with people

[Tony Farmer]

I fished the Dorset Stour at the weekend at Iford Bridge. There were a couple of kids fishing the stretch. Said they were members and seemed quite knowledgeable about the venue. However when they left, they left a mountain of rubbish on the bank and top make matters worse their father picked them up and helped them with their gear and never said a word about it. I'm afraid at a time when the antis seem to be targeting fishing I dont hold out much future for our sport when you see this type of behaviour all over the place and if adult guardians are not going to set an example for their kids then we are looking at a very bleak future. I also witnessed an incident a couple of months ago where a fisherman( a man in his 50's+) dragged a bream up a bank with no net, bounced it off the hook and kicked it back into the water. This incident took place in a Royal Park in full view of the general public. I reported the incident and he was removed from the water, but anyone who saw this must think fisherman are barbaric. I dont know what the answer is but I know if something is not done and soon, our sport will be another that ends up banned

 

[Ron Clay]

As regards litter, I am afraid that UK anglers are the worst in the world and I have fished in quit a few countries.

Go down the Trent after a match.

Go down any river on a Monday morning. And they ARE anglers because only anglers leave Sensless goundbait bags, Drennan hook packets, Nutrabaits boily bags etc, etc.

At times I truly despair, especially when one character who is quite well known for his prowess in matches, collected up all his rubbish into an Asda bag, and then hung it up in a willoe tree and left it.

Even worse are those carp anglers who cast rigs very close to trees etc. On occasions the rig is caught by a branch. They pull for a break leaving a rig plus boily up the tree!!

Need I say more?

 

[Keith Miller]

Despite my local clubs card being heavily endorsed with the words "Litter Loses Waters" I was very much displeased when we lost the rights to one of my favourite spots, a weirpool on the Colne for the problems caused by litter from anglers.
I always make it a point to remove what I find and have always done so whenever I have taken students on outings.
I have been consistently disgusted by the mess I have found on Irish waters.

 

[Richard Drayson]

Tony said " if adult guardians are not going to set an example for their kids then we are looking at a very bleak future."
Sadly, this isn't limited to leaving litter on the bank. Look at what's going on in your locality, juvenile crime, vandalism, muggings etc etc.
Some (not all) youngsters have no respect for authority. When caught doing something that they shouldn't, they just tell you to f*** off.
Not like the old days when a good clip round the ear sent them packing.
Try doing that now and you'll be had up for assault.
OK, the litter problem isn't just caused by the kids, the adults are just as bad and they should know better.
It's just pure laziness. A can't be bothered or who gives a s**t syndrome.
Members leaving litter should be chucked out of any club. The trouble is going to be the abuse you're likely to encounter on the bankside when approaching someone.
Maybe litter patrols are the answer, better still Litter Police.

 

[Robert Draper]

Back when I was a Venture Scout Leader we used a three strikes policy on camping litter. If you were caught with any litter whatsoever near your tent you got a warning. After three warnings you had to pay double to go on the next three camping trips. If people caught littering had to pay double for their fishing it would pay for someone to stroll round with a bin bag from time to time.

 

[Craig Smith]

On this note last Sunday after work I headed off for a few hours fishing at a local pit set behind the owners house. I was greeted with the normal
"it's shit hear only had one fish" (might have had something to do with them fishing in less than 2 ft of water)
Much to there disgust I had a few pastie carp before they left. Anyway as they were leaving I had noticed all there litter and just mentioned that the bin was 20 paces behind them! To which the responce f*@k off you don't own the lake. Little did they know that the owner and friend for the last 10yrs was in the garden within earshot. To which his immedeate responce was
"get lost put your rubbish in the bin and never come back your kind spoils it for everyone else"
They gave the normal answers it's
"shit hear anyway"
To which his responce was
"no your the shit fisherman Craig's only been hear half an hour and caught more than you would in a week!"
Which made me snigga.
The only common sense answer is for every angler to carry a plastic bag when fishing for rubbish. It always pays to pick up a handfull at Tescos as they are free.

 

[Malcolm Bason]

Whats wrong with putting the rubbish back in the kit bag? It weighs a hell of a lot less than it did taking it there! The ONLY place to dispose of rubbish is at home!

 

[Ron Clay]

Be like me, take your sandwiches in an Asda bag and put all your rubbish including mono offcuts and dog ends into the same Adsa bag.

 

[Simon Vicos]

It's true that kids don't give a shit but so many adults set dreadful examples. I can't understand why some of the people who fish at Yateley leave baked bean tins behind (not long stay anglers either) and beer bottles. Who needs to drink beer outside in Winter?. I take mine home in a bag and throw it away. At Yateley they will throw you out for litter and you'd lose your permit. On my local Woking waters they had a problem with people stuffing cans and bags in Kingfisher nests !. It makes me sad but the only way is to educate people. Educate them that litter kills wildlife, it should start in School but I'm afriad they only teach "media studies" and rename Christmas "Winterval" these days.

I'm hoping it will turn full circle soon.

 

[Mark Lathwell]

I can’t agree with you all more.
I fish with my 2 sons who are only 11 and 8 but i still have to tell them to pick up there rubbish, it seems to be a habit of open it eat it then drop it where you stand. We fish at Docklow in Hereford most weekends and the rubbish stuffed in the hedges is disgusting and there are not many children or teenagers there but adult anglers, and the amount line hanging off the trees is amazing. Just last week a man was checking a little island for line as a Coot was killed by line around its neck and it was part of a breeding pair its about time litter rules were enforced.
We have enough trouble with PETA on our back with out trying to destroy fishing our selves.

 

[Tony Farmer]

Glad to see so many feel the same as i do. I think that one of the problems with enforcement is that so few waters (especially rivers) seem to have bailiffs or indeed other anglers on them that people can come and go as they please and just dump all their rubbish on the bank and unfortunately nowadays approching others to ask them to remove their rubbish can be a risky business. Lets just hope that commonsense prevails and people can see how much damage they are causing our sport - unfortunately i cant see it somehow

 

[Kevan Farmer]

Craig. Take heart in the knowledge that those idiot 'pretend' anglers will not be visiting that gravel pit again. It sounds doubtful that they would return anyway even without the owners intervention. In fact, if they are that poor at angling then they may well put up their tackle for sale in the local paper. I know we need more anglers but we need them to be countryside aware as well. Does anybody remember those public service announcements advising people of 'The Countryside Code'? Shut gates behind you, take all of your litter home? Perhaps they need to be re-run.

Kevan

 

[disco dan]

I fish at kingsbury water park in tamworth staffs this is a huge venue full of about 9-10 gravel pit lakes fullof everytthing.It is
run by warwick county council and you have to pay ?2.20 to get in as it is a country
park so can be packed in summer not just by
fishermen but picknickers dog walkers etc. But the nearly all the litteryou see left behind is from anglers pegs and bushes are covered in it all round the lakes.Now this
venue is visted by over 100,000 vistors just in the summer and the vast amount are not anglers so what a good example we are setting.The day ticket carp lake as been used for the british carp championships over
the last couple of years and i must commended the organisers as they make sure no litter is left.Its just ashame that not all anglers have enough respect for wildlife or the waters they fish.I have even taken other peoples left rubbish home before.

 

[Stuart Bullard]

Tony, first, well done on reporting him. That takes guts.

We are bad, but I fished and river rafted rivers in the US and they are even worse!! Not that I would ever be defensive about the morons in the UK who do it.

At one of my clubs (lake complex) you are obliged to carry a black bin liner at all times and clean up your swim, even if it was not your litter. It has had a really positive effect, especially as we report each swim number if there was excessive litter. The baliffs check quite regularly and as a result a pattern built up and they expelled about 10 members........good for them.

 

[Laurie Harper]

Good idea, Kevan.I can remember those ad's. The important thing is that any publicity is aimed at the public in general. Many of us are very aware of the dangers of leaving litter. And there's the problem. We are preaching to the converted. Without wishing to blow our collective trumpet, I think it's safe to say that keen, regular anglers are generally pretty switched on about these things. The problem is caused mainly by occasional line-wetters (telescopic rods from Argos, horrible shell suits in loud colours, etc.) who don't have a clue about anything. The sad thing is, they are probably behaving in exactly the same way on the bank as they do in life generally. Imagine the homes they live in - beer tins under the sofa, sarnies trodden into the carpet, cat litter tray overflowing... It's sad but true that a slob doesn't suddenly become a reformed character when he (or she) picks up a fishing rod. How do we reach them, though? I shouldn't imagine many of them visit this site or read any of the angling press (they probably don't read at all, come to think of it..). I don't want to sound despairing, but what can we do?

 

[Dave Kennedy]

The biggest problem we have with litter on our stretch of river is caused by rubish coming off he M11 which runs over the water.

there is i am glad to say very little litter left by our members. It is a private stretch of water and there is teqnically no right of way acsess to the river for the public, though we do get a few locals walking there dogs(they make good unpaid bailifs as they tell us of anything amis)

The only other problem we get is the ocasional fly tipper, luckily the landowner deals with the residue that is left from that problem.

On the other side of the coin though is the free stretch of river at grantchester meadows. Anglers are always being acused of leaving litter here. i can answer with all honesty IT IS NOT THE ANGLERS.

it is the hoora henrys and other idiots who decide to hold late night parties on the common. there will be a couple of cars turn up with barbeque's and booze which they set up near the river, and then 5-6 punts apear carrying the drunken students.

when they eventually go home in a drunken stupour at about 2am or later they are not in a fit state to clear up there little, hence the anglers get the blame.

i was fishing there one day and got the blame from a very irate old lady for all the beer bottles that wer behind my swim. there was 76 of them. i know that because my fishing partner and i collected them all up and left them by the rubbish bin at the car park.

Anglers arn't angels, but we are not the main cause of litter.
If you have got a problem it is usally because the controling club has a weak comittee. if that is the case you can only change it from within.

There is a lot of apathy in regards to fishing clubs, people join but then expect verything done for them.
getting members to join working parties is hard work. and quess who are the ones that are always moaning.......yep you got it, the ones who never turn up and help out.

a bit off subject really and i apoligise, when i started typing i couldnt stop

 

[GrahamM]

That's no problem Dave, better to have a long say than no say at all.

 

[Dave O'L]

I was just thinking the black bag was a good idea. Last year by the G.U. canal in a field there was some angling rubbish I picked up but most of it was 'picnickers' from the local estate, bagged up hanging in trees.

Part of me thought leave it as I had picked up the fishing rubbish, but there were lots of public about, collective guilt & all that, so I took it all. I didn't want to give them chance to blame fishermen.
If I had a black bag I could have done it all in 1 trip & made it easier.

 

[Jim Hinchley]

last summer i got sick of the litter on one particular club stretch of the rochdale canal so i and my fishing partner decided to take some empty black bin liners and throwaway plastic gloves on our next session. On arriving we dished out the bin bags to 3 other anglers already fishing ( who needed a little cajoling to join in) and spent the first 30 mins of the session cleaning up other anglers rubbish.
The message i suppose im trying to convey is all the discussions in the world wont solve the problem and we really cant afford to give our sport any bad press so do your bit and exert some peer pressure.
This is probably easier if you are quite forthright and your mate looks a bit like joe bugner but give it a try.

 

[Duncan Kellett]

Dear all,

I fear its not only anglers and other river/lakeside users who offend by not clearing up their litter, other self confessed guardians of the countryside are also to blame.

The rivers I fish, flow predominantly through dairy/sheep farming areas and garlanding the trees not unlike Christmas decorations are all manner of ex-farming detritus. Black silage wrapper, the new and highly visible blue silage wrapper, feedbags and bailer band. We recently cleared approximately 2 miles of single bank fishing, collecting 12 extra large plastic sacks full of rubbish from areas we could reach (there was a lot more that we couldn’t get at without a boat) and I can say that over 95% of the contents were ex-agricultural in origin.

We anglers do get and will get bad press, sometimes deservedly, regarding litter BUT we are not the only culprits and I think it only just that the finger should be pointed at other groups who visually pollute our river banks.

There are a number of plastic recycling initiatives around at the moment aimed squarely at the farming community, but the total tonnage of recycled plastic to the tonnage purchased new every year is minimal so therefore the balance of plastic waste is either burnt (airborne pollution), buried (Its non-biodegradable) or just dumped around the farm were inevitable a percentage finds its way into the water course and hence onto the trees and banks.

What the solution to this is I don’t know, perhaps a plastics tax to which you can claim a total refund if you recycle an equal amount of waste to the amount purchased the balance of unclaimed refund could be used to provide funding for cleanup operations.

I am afraid that we are definitely a disposable society and until we admit to owning the problem then a problem it will remain.

Anyway I’ve rambled on too long

Cheers

Duncan