Matches......

[Darren Wainwright]

Sorry guys - King of debate threads tonight

I was chatting with my girlfriends father tonight and we spoke about a time last year when we went to one of our local fisheries to watch a bit of match fishing. I'm not going to name the fishery so please dont ask, but.. This particular fishery has quite a lot of matches and what we did notice was the way the anglers were litteraly dragging the fish in and having no repsect at all for the fish, so little so that we were hard pushed to see many fish that weren't missing lips, or had gained pretty bad damage from foul hooking.

I know there are prizes at stake etc but do you think perhaps fisheries should be restricted to how many matches they can hold per season...... or is this the case allready?

Anyway, thats my little moan for now.

Cheers guys

 

[Dave Slater]

I have always thought that too many matches being held on waters is very unfair on other anglers. Match anglers pay the same club subscriptions as the rest of us yet we, the majority, are excluded from waters whenever they want to have matches. In my local area match anglers are the minority. One thing that particularly annoys me is "keepnets banned except in matches". I have no problem at all with keepnet bans but, surely, most of the damage caused by using keepnets is done by match fisherman. Most specialist anglers do not use them.

 

[Dave Slater]

I would be very interested to hear the views of Mark Wintle on this one. Mark was a very successful local match angler. He no longer fishes matches and is now more of a specialist angler.

 

[GrahamM]

We saw it at Clattercote last year. After we carefully and respectfully returned our fish after the weigh-in and were walking off we saw them weighing the results of another match. It was bloody disgusting how they were handling them and tipping them back like a sack of spuds.

Although I say it myself, the FM match was a damn good example of how you can have a match, use keepnets, and yet still treat fish with respect and return them as good as when they were caught.

It's like anything else, it's not the match or the equipment used, it's the people who are using them that need educating.

 

[Darren Wainwright]

Phewww, at least i'm not the only one that has a few doubting thoughts against matches too.

I like that point about the keepnet rule too...... SUCKS, is my well thought out opinion on that one .
Most of the match anglers at the event i watched were reeling the fish in so fast, harldy any play at all, then get the hook out quick smart and lob em in the net. Yet on one occasion (with the same guy i watched the match with) we were allowed keep nets and he was very carefull in putting his fish in the net, and taking them out again.

Besides the whole unfair view on keepnets it's also a bit of a pain to have to keep a log of all the fish you catch one day to know the total weight caught..

Makes me wonder why someone even bothered to make up the bye-law for keepnets, when the ones who can use them abuse the fish they stock in them!

 

[Ron Clay]

I have seen barbel up to 5 lbs and good sized eels thrown up the banks of the Trent after matches.

I don't mind people eating eels, but killing them and chucking them up the bank is a terrible waste.

 

[Darren Wainwright]

Why Ron? Why do people throw these fish away rather than return them?

<---- is now starting to think about a lobby for strict match rules now... and i dont even match fish LOL

 

[Stuart Harvey]

Its important not too start thinking that all matches are run in the same way as all the terrible examples being given. Some pleasure and specimen anglers are just as guilty as matchmen.

 

[Chris Bishop]

You get so few people fishing matches away from the commrcial fisheries these days I doubt it makes a lot of difference.

It's astonishing how the sport's declined since the 70s, read the Fens piece I filed a couple of weeks back, the difference today is incredible.

 

[Mark Wintle]

Dave's trying to get me to take the bait; oop's swallowed it! There are many issues here. Greed to win money has never helped match fishing's cause. The sheer efficiency of modern match fishing methods doesn't help either. But good organisation prevents the worst excesses; John Raison's running of Gold Valley shows how it should be done, he does run it with an iron fist but that's what makes the difference. There is no excuse for bad fish handling, and that applies to all anglers. Used properly keepnets shouldn't cause too many problems, but in certain conditions and for some species they are usually inappropriate. Certainly nets and fast water, or a mix of big and small fish are out. As Dave says I used to match fish seriously; I've seen it all, including an Ex England angler nearly go swimming after tipping fish back from 6ft. The more haste less speed does apply to match fishing, and rough hauling is not always advantageous; the fish deserve much better. I did serious speed fishing at one time against the likes of Ray Mumford and 300 per hour needs careful unhooking if you don't want to be tying new hooks... I'd certainly like to see keepnets used less for pleasure fishing, especially when everything goes in the net including the real tiddlers; they don't spook the better fish.

 

[GrahamM]

It's like I said earlier, it's not the keepnet, it's not match fishing, it's not the bad examples of bad fish-handling that we can all think of in ALL branches of angling - it's the 'don't-give-a-toss-brigade' in each and every case who get everyone tarred with the same brush.

No matter which angling approach they follow they'll always have the same attitude.

The great pity is that it's those people we have to legislate for and erode the freedoms of those who do care at the same time.