fox hunting

[vince battams]

well the ban of fox hunting with dogs has passed its first hurdle,its just left now to the lords,lets hope most of them are senile and pissed and basically cannot be bothered with it and throw it out,if not then the anti's will join forces big time and angling will be next.
what angling needs to do now is unify under one umbrella across the nation,one organisation covering all aspects from tackle manufacturers and shops,fish farms,private fisheries,fishing clubs,specimen organisations,sea fishing,pleasure anglers and so on.
what we do not want to do is side with the countryside alliance,why ?,well what have they done for us,have they said what they can do for us,have they ever publicly stated their support for angling,yes they need us but do we need them ?,NO we do not.
lets show those outside angling we're not barbaric,tackle manufacturers stop producing barbed hooks,lets ban the use of barbed hooks across the board.
ban the use of livebaits,okay use coarse deadbaits but only those fish farmed not taken from local waters.
lets go back to the old close season nationally,okay this will upset the likes of whiteacres for instance but these people will survive financially.
pleasure anglers/match anglers/specimen anglers alike take your rubbish home,lets show we care about the countryside as well.
ban the use of keepnets with the exception of matches and in order to prevent the spread of disease private fisheries should supply keepnets for matches,fishing clubs supply your own as well but have someone responsible for dipping them prior to matches.
make fishing for juniors upto 12,ladies and the disabled free of charge.
members of angling clubs should be made to do at least one work party a year for the club to help maintain fisheries helping keeping them free of rubbish and debris which can be harmful to wildlife and look unsightly to outsiders.
lets put fishing first in order to preserve our sport not others wishes.

 

[vince battams]

oh and another thing before i forget is ban the use of mutiple rods,sorry to some of you guys and yes i do use more than one but for the benefit of our sport one rod is sufficient.

 

[Paul Williams]

Vince, sorry mate but i disagree with most of what you say!!! sacrifice livebaiting for instance and that will include eventually your lobworms maggots and everything else live! we must stand our ground and not give an inch, if you don't like it don't do it, but don't stop those of us who look on it as another method!
I can go along with free licences for kids but why women??? doe's say a woman police officer earn less than a male officer?
I regulary use up to three rods, in the correct circumstances there is no problem at all, i also use one often, again why take away my right to fish as i like, as long as i am doing no harm to my fellow anglers or the fish what is the problem?? i buy two rod licences!!
I regulary fish big gravel pits and try to target decent fish, i know plenty of waters that may only produce a dozen or so bites a season, am i so bad when i use two or three rods on these waters? believe me if i could get away with catching them on one rod on a quick day session i would!!
I know you have angling at heart but we must think long and hard about what direction we are going to take.

 

[Stewart Bloor]

I think we need to think how the anti thinks. Any attempt at self regulation (such as banning keep nets, barbed hooks and so on) will not appease them. In fact, it will spur them on, because they have tasted a sense of victory.
Vince, although you have stressed the need for unity (which I agree with), unfortunately, the comments you make will actually achieve the opposite. So when Paul opens his mail with , 'sorry mate but i disagree with most of what you say!!!', I'm afraid that will be the reaction of many reading your posting.
For the sake of unity we need to have a liberal view within angling towards issues such as livebaiting (and I don't by the way, so I'm not secretly fighting my own corner). As Paul so rightly says, worms, maggots and so on will be next. Although we, as individual anglers may see a difference between live bait and maggots, believe me , the anti does not. In their mnd, we are all cold blooded killers. If we, for example, agreed to stop live baiting, would that soothe the anti? No way, it would merely prompt them to achieve more.
Whether we like it or not, country sports are a buffer for angling.

 

[GrahamM]

I've just read the lines below on a chat group. I endorse them 100%.

"There is no appeasing the anti with the giving of any ground nor with logical argument. They are hell bent on one course, and that is to ban all hunting and fishing. It matters not one jot to them if we are linked either directly or indirectly with hunters of foxes or anything else. As far as they are concerned we all piss in the same pot.

"To them it's all very simple: we get fun from catching/trapping a living creature, and the fact that coarse anglers return the fish only endorses the fact that we do it for fun and not for food, which, to them, is the greatest 'sin'."

 

[vince battams]

3-1 down and the replies are not coming thick and fast yet,okay chaps i can see what you are saying if we make changes within our sport for those outside then they'll expect more.
unification is a must though we must bring all parties within this sport together from manufacturers right down to joe bloggs,the NAA i think could just be the start but are they the voice of the few or the many its no use them making the rules they should ballot the anglers,we should be allowed to vote on our sport,the EA has our addresses canvas us see what we think ,go with what the majority want,lets use this thread within the forum to see how we can shape our future that is not only not detrimental to our sport but is also not detrimental in the view of the outsider.

 

[Malcolm Bason]

"3-1 down" No, sorry Vince, if you look further down the list under "General" there is a thread entitled "Countryside Alliance" started by Ron Clay, the whole thing has already been done mate. Please take a look at the replies on there. Cheers!

 

[Alan Cooper]

I agree with Graham's comments - there is no appeasement of the antis. With them it is all or nothing and so it must be with us. For all those of us with various scruples about this or that aspect of our sport, it will do us absolutely no good whatsoever other than to be 100% behind and to the side of each other in this debate.

 

[DAVE COOPER]

Vince, I'm going to add to the score I'm afraid. We don't need to ban anything we currently do. Everything we do is fine by me, including livebaiting.

Barbed hooks are ok too as far as I'm concerned. Personally i don't think they do anymore or less harm than barbless.

Why ban multiple rods? It's as if you are agreeing its wrong to fish, but as a compromise you won't use as many rods. Strange sort of compromise.

The only things we should be doing, and it shouldn't matter a hoot whether we are under threat from antis or not, is to look after the environment we have been entrusted with. Get rid of the litter louts, the foul mouthed, the people who damage farmers property etc. yes. But do not give an inch on angling methods we have every right to utilise.

I do agree with other sentiments that we need a centralised and cohesive political voice that speaks powerfully for all anglers, not multiple groups representing factions.

 

[Ron Clay]

Stewart (Sedge) gives us a very well balanced response here.
Changing the subject somewhat, I believe Stewart you doe some of your work in Africa. Maybe you have run into an old Friend of mine - Don Wittich? He was a member of the old Coventry Specimen Group which was formed in the 60s by Tony Miles. Don today is an ordained Anglican Priest. He has done work in the poor parts of Johannesburg and today lives, I believe in Namibia.
Have you heard of him. He still fishes I believe,

 

[Stewart Bloor]

Hi Ron, and thanks. Yes, I have been in a number of African nations and South Africa has been one of them (8 times). I've never heard of Don. But it is a big world and I'm sure he's never heard of me. But it's nice to see there's another Piscatorial Priest out there...I have been fishing in South Africa though a number of times. Unfortunately, going to the other side of the world didn't make a scrap of difference - I still blanked...mind, in my defence I was really working and borrowed bits of tackle.
Oops, I'd better mention fox hunting...after all I shouldn't digress from the thread...

 

[vince battams]

to those that have replied,paul and david livebaiting must be looked at closely to see if it is good for the image of angling or not,not just because it is a method that works and paul i think your taking things a little too far by bringing lobworms and maggots into the equation.
stewart,graham and alan self regulation is not an attempt to appease the antis.
malcolm countryside who,forget these people who are trying to offer us a free ride nowhere,its angling or bust mate.
ron,a one line comment then you want to find a friend,i say to you find another thread mate and you to stewart for replying there are more important issues at stake on this thread than what your bringing in.

 

[Stewart Bloor]

Sorry if we've upset you Vince but your original posting was pretty blunt and controversial. Surely you didn't expect to post a mail like that and not get a response?
As for Alan asking me about his friend, one of the things I've found about the Forum is that it does become a place whereby you can have a bit of banter, bit of chat and so on.

 

[vince battams]

to appease the anti's is not what i am saying,but self regulation is a must.
the anti's are not the problem its the general publics perception of us.
for the next 5,10,15,20 years however long it takes the anti's will brainwash these people in a subtle manner so as to look as if we are the bad guys.
all eyes will be on us,these people will know nothing about or sport,hobby,pastime whatever you choose to call it,it is their lack of understanding or ignorance if you like that anything they see which they don't understand they'll immediately dislike and be against.
what we want is them looking from the outside in and liking what they see.
we want them to see us as conservationists,protecting the enviroment in which we enjoy ourselves,looking at us and seeing the fish not as our prey but a living thing which we want to preserve and help proliferate.

 

[vince battams]

stewart yes blunt and controversial yes and i do expect replies thats why i posted it.
and yes i agree the forum is for banter but this particular thread was for a specific purpose if you and ron want to banter about years gone by and absent friends then start a new thread or e.mail yourselves direct.

 

[vince battams]

to steve pope who e.mailed me direct thanks for your support

 

[vince battams]

we must start promoting the sport even more to the younger generations,we should start by offering them something that is free,scrapping of rod licences to under 18's and free fishing as well.children with non angling parents should be encoraged to join angling clubs and be adopted by adult members to tutour through there early years,how many of us have room in our cars for a youngster ?.
this should be monitored,what we don't want is our reputations and sport tarnished by paedophiles infiltrating our sport,a local club to me had one of these perverts and he was a distinguished member of the committee.

 

[vince battams]

carrying on from where i left off,the promotion of angling to the disabled should be improved on,it should be made more accessable to them and i don't just mean by the laying of concrete slabs and stating your fishery has disabled facilities,the disabled should let their voices be heard more they are after all human and can do more for angling than what we can do and are doing at present for them.
i may have been a bit hasty with the banning of livebaiting and barbed hooks,but htese two issues need looking at more closely to see if they benfit angling or not.
unification is a must for all factions of the sportwith nofavours or hidden agendas to certain parties,we are one and must remain one.
a return to the old closed season across the board is a must for angling,without it personally it takes away a bit of the magic of angling and it also gives banside plantlife a chance to regenerate after months of trundling feet.
a reduction in the number of rods allowed at any one time from two to four,it was two but the speccy wanted three,got htree then they wanted four ,got four where will it stop,here it must stop and now a reduction to two rods maximem is a must.
an increase in the licence fee from april this year to ?25 of which ?2 goes immediately to the aca and another ?2 goes to the ea fish farms to fund the restocking of our rivers,not carp ponds,carp ponds are a fad rivers are a must.
the rod licence to be for two rods maximum and only one allowed per person with no loop holes in the system where buying a second means you can get away with fishing four rods.
The removal of all non native species from our waters unless someone can prove they are indigenous to this country.
the problem with cormorants,signal crayfish and now mitten crabs to be left alone nature has its way of sorting its self out,look what they said about fishing in fens when the zander got in,whats the problem now .
unification and self regulation is a must lets start shaping the future of angling here and now before we have no future to sort out.

 

[GrahamM]

Vince, Hope you feel better now you've got that off your chest.

A couple of things.

The bans you advocate won't win us any favour with the general public. And I think you should look on every ban as another fence that has been lost in the defence that surrounds us.

The word 'appeasement' comes to mind. We shouldn't be trying to appease anyone. We should feel comfortable with what we do and defend it for what it is. Never mind what it looks like to the general public. Unless they fish they will never understand.

We get fun from catching fish, and we catch fish by sticking hooks in them and pulling them from the water.

That's what the antis are against, and that is the one thing about fishing you cannot change.

All the rest is insignificant in comparison to that one thing. The one thing we cannot change.

Let's fight our corner on those grounds.

 

[Paul Williams]

Vince we appear to now live in a society where every one else wants to tell everyone what they should or shouldn't do, I livebait, why don't you want me to?
I use 3 rods at times, why don't you want me to?
your first mail was in my opinion riddled with inaccuraces thats why i replied, and also to defend my right to fish as i choose.
If you really want to get involved with the way angling is run there are plenty of opportunities, perhaps Steve Pope could point you in the right direction, personally i find it strange he can bother to read a thread have comments to make and not make them to the thread, mind you perhaps he thought you would do it for him??
Vince the threads often go off at a tangent thats why even if a particular title doesn't interest me i still read it, i can't see a problem with that, we are just having a chat.