Wintle?s World of Angling ? Angling Attitudes

The biggest problem with John Bailey is that he is being watched closely by the anti-angling mobs. He is the most quoted angler on one of their websites, simply because he provides the most and the best quotes from their perspective. For that reason alone he should be extremely careful about what he writes.

For instance, not so long ago I took him to task about writing about the stress that fish feel when being lifted from the water. And I don?t mean lifted from the water and taken to the bank for a photograph, but simply lifted and held above the water. He said all fish should be unhooked while still in the landing net in the water. Any other way subjects them to too much stress and trauma.

My argument was that if the mere act of lifting them above the water caused them stress, then sticking a hook in them and hauling them, obviously against their will, to the landing net, was indefensible.

The bottom line of which is that we don?t have a leg to stand on in any debate with the antis, or anyone else who asks us to justify catching fish, if the mere act of lifting them from the water causes stress and trauma.

John Bailey, as much as I admire him as a wordsmith and a photographer, is not doing fishermen or the fish any favours.

From what I have been about John Bailey in his younger days, he would have been at the extreme fluorescent vermillion end of the spectrum!

He used to put big roach in keepnets for days. Then transport them (I wonder how) to another water so he can photoraph them so that people don't know where they were caught!

His article on the reasons for two tone fish was total codswallop.

To my mind he is a hypocrite of the first order.

I don't agree at all, Graham.
It is anglers themselves who will give antis the greatest ammo if they get their act together.
A couple of years ago I happened to be strolling around Pilsworth Lake, in Bury. On the match lake I heard the "All-Out" so decided to wander over and watch the weigh-in. The fish were being appallingly treated by all concerned. Dumped from keepnets into rockhard weigh pans, piled on top of each other, scales were everywhere. Noone gave a damn.
I attended a netting at Belmont Pool last year and hundreds of gudgeon got gill-netted. Only about 3 people from the 40 or so there tried to free them.
Some of us are are own worst enemies and John Bailey is right about a lot of things. An idealist, yes, but I think he is trying to educate. Don't shoot the messenger. The antis just need to spend a day with a camera on a carp puddle to get their evidence.

I've seen him on the box occasionally, I've read about him but I've never read one of his books, but it sounds to me as though he's become elitist and they are dangerous bedfellows.

In what are dangerous times for angling, the last person you need for a spokesman on fishing is somebody like Mr Bailey. Maybe less/no publicity for him through the angling press is a place to start.

If Walker had been alive today he would have carved him into tiny little pieces.

Graham, I agree he has certainly become an elitist.
I used to like Bailey and have read a couple of his books which were very good, but now I just think he's a tit and well stuck up his own bottom.

He has become a total hypocrite compared to his ways and preachings of his younger years.

Blunderer, I don't disagree with you at all re the behaviour at Pilsworth Lake, but you tell me how we reconcile sticking hooks in fish when one of our better known anglers is saying that just the mere act of lifting them from the water causes them stress and trauma?

I'm not shooting the messenger by the way. They were John Bailey's own words, not someone else's he was delivering.

Graham, I think it probably does cause them stress and trauma, just as sticking a hook in them does. That's why they go to such extreme lengths to not get caught.
But what we should do as anglers is try to minimise their suffering as much as possible.
I am not an expert on his writing at all, I have made my opinion from the article on the angling spectrum and the summary of his views.
I can't see much wrong with his opinion, personally. But I admit I have not read anything beyond a crappy book called Freshwater Fishing that someone once bought me.
By the way, I was talking to someone who knew you the other day - John Stubbs, Bailiff at Lymmvale.

If I thought I caused fish to suffer stress and trauma I might think twice about going fishing. But I don't.

That John Bailey does think that then he should pack it in.

That's my point.

Give my regards to John please.

This is a cracking ethical debate!
Does anyone else, honestly, honestly, not believe that fish suffer any stress when caught?
I can reconcile the fact that they do with the fact that I do everything to mimimise it and that it will not kill or seriously injure them.
But they certainly suffer a degree of stress or they would not try to avoid being caught!
Don't take this the wrong way, I don't want to get slated for being an anti, I am certainly not!

No, but we have to very careful how we say what we inwardly believe.

I honestly believe that fish love being fed with food of high nutritional value, enjoy the fight from a good angler, being slipped into a nice soft landing net, placed with loving care onto a soft, luxurious unhooking mat while the hook is gently slipped out, being weighed and told they must go on a diet because those loving anglers are feeding them too well, and then photographed because they're so good looking, and then slipped gently back into the water so that they can enjoy the same thing all over again as soon as possible.

God, we're so good to fish how can anybody think we would do them any harm? I love them almost as much as I love my wife, and sometimes I love them even more when she's been 'orrible to me and tried to stop me from catching another lovely fish that I want to treat to some more TLC.

Stress and trauma at being caught?

No more than any fish undergoes in the wild in the normal course of it's life. As far as I'm concerned we the anglers are the fishes greatest friends. If it wasn't for us, millions of fish would have died quite horribly from pollution and many other things.

And when I kill a fish I give it a good belt between the eyes with a heavy priest.

Hey I like that Graham.

Most fish get better treatment from anglers than people captured in Iraq.

Graham - you nearly bit your tongue off, it was so far into your cheek! This is remarkably like what we've been thrashing about on the foxhunting site.

I think fish do feel some stress at being hooked and played. Like Ron says though it's probably not anymore than they experience naturally. John seems to have become too eltist but the core of his beliefs (fishcare) should sit in more anglers minds than they do.

As Mark says about commercials and wanting to catch a big bag of fish it has led to a vast army of anglers that now use what is tantamount to hauling tactics and blow the wider picture! This what Blundered witnessed.

As I have said on the other thread there is this 'fear' among angling that we shouldn't draw attention to the dodgy practices in our sport. We should go the other way though as this is how we educate people. Not addressing issues out loud I believe IMHO will only fuel the antis in the long run.

I do wonder if John has caught so much quality fish that he has got bored with it now?

John Bailey is a problem for angling in his own right. I don't doubt his abilities as an angler or, as Graham says, as a wordsmith in general. However, the best "wordsmiths" realise when they are going too far, particularly when what they write is being used against the sport they so lovingly write about.

Consider, also, John's position as Vice-President of the ACA, the protectors of our water environment. In this years ACA Review he again writes (in "Let's not just think fisheries") about the abolition of keepnets, the stress caused to barbel to the point of becoming "neurotic", and even the stress caused by catching more that two fish from a shoal. The ACA, I am sure, wants every angler possible as a member, but how are they to attract the vast number of anglers in the UK with a VP with an attitude like that?

I have even thought of quitting my membership as a protest until they sack him.

It's a very noble position to take and, as others have said, very elitist and one can take that attitude when you have access to very remote stretches of beautiful and well stocked river. But what about the average Brummie who can only fish the local canal, or the Londoner who has to now scratch a few fish from a destroyed Thames, or even up in the north where travel and facilities might mean anglers having to commercial waters in order to find fun?

Time John realised that in the real world, anglers get the best out of what is available. They don't have vast resources to visit way off places like Mongolia or India catching mahseer or even Nile perch. A couple of perch or a bit of "baggin" for some small carp are all most can expect.

And finally, yes, John can and is hypocritical on one point at least. He maintains he wants to see the coarse close season re-established. Yet he is happy to travel to Ireland and catch pike during our close season. Now pardon me, but if you are insisting the close season is good for ALL fish then surely fish in another country (and on the same latitude) should be treated on a par with our own stock.

Fish may well feel stress when they are caught but, with their short-term memory (what is it? A few seconds?), it's not exactly going to condemn them to a lifetime on Prozac is it? How many of us have caught the same fish twice, or more, in the same session - I know I have. There 'are' things in angling which need looking at and, perhaps, changing. But change must come from within the sport and not at the behest of antis. The tackle trade could start the ball rolling by thinking a bit more before they name rods/poles "Grim Reaper", "Carp Cruncher", "Beastmaster" and such - Shimano's latest reel is called "Undertaker" for heaven's sake, what does this say to non-anglers? I, being pretty much in the middle of the angling spectrum, don't want to 'crunch' any fish.
Rant mode 'Off', I took too many grumpy pills today.

I couldn't agree with you more John.

Articles typically with the name "Bag Up with Bob" set what few teeth I have on edge.

We really do not need to use such explicatives in what should be portrayed as a gentle art. This sort of language will attract a form of aggression in our sport that we don't need.

Are you listening Richard Lee?

Three cheers Jeff. One of the best thought out contributions I've read.

I have felt for some time that John Bailey is getting carried away with an inflated sense of his own importance. He is doing the sport no favours at all with his pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

I warned in an earlier thread that we as anglers must be very careful what we say and how we say it. The anti's will twist words anyway, but if they can quote us verbatim then we are in real trouble.

And right again Jeff, most anglers suffer the twin restraints of time of finance. It's ok for the few who can afford to swan off to exotic places, but most have to make do with what's on their doorstep.

Why don't you stand for ACA Vice-President Jeff?

On yer b.....