Discrimination or Not ?

You are in a club, and you buy a licence.

This licence allows you to fish your clubs waters usually between the hours of sunrise and sunset seven days a week.

<u>If you are a Pleasure Angler,</u>
You have everything you need, so go fishing until your hearts content for the day.

<u>If you are a Match Angler,</u>
Or you may be interested in starting match fishing, your licence also allows you to fish your clubs matches <u>at no extra cost.</u>

<u>If you are a Specimen Angler,</u>
You may want to night fish, in some clubs, you have to purchase an extra licence which comes in the form of a night permit.

Look carefully at these two aspects of our sport, and ask yourself, why the Specimen Angler has to pay extra for night fishing which he organises for himself, but the Match Angler gets this extra service at no additional cost, yet at the same time involves a lot of extra work for the club concerned.
Is the Specimen Angler getting short shrift?

This is not something that ?might? enable Specimen Anglers to get something for nothing, we all want to support our clubs, but the way things are going, does this give food for thought?
For some reason or another, could this be a potential test case smouldering away in the background? Or should the Match Anglers pay extra for the privilege of Match Fishing?
What are your thoughts on this?

It is just another way of cashing in on the specimen hunters!
Match fishing in my experiance genrally closes the stretch you want to fish so yes i believe they should pay more

I say that this is discrimination. Granted, pay extra for night fishing as you can be on the water 24/7. Everyone else are only for 12 hr session or there abouts.
So where is the discrimination?
Match anglers are cattered for without any extra cost involved, they take over the water, bank or stretch and everyone else have to move, including the over nighters.

There is another way of looking at it.

<u>Two Different Clubs.</u>

One membership is ?50 per year, and pay for your night permit separately if you want one.

The other membership is ?70 per year, night permit included.

The club that charges ?50 per year could be doing it this way as it would help to keep prices down for pensioners.

The club that charges ?70 per year, is targeting the more wealthier pensioner, and overall are making the most money. But what of the not so well off pensioner? And do they even care?

Something as simple as the question I asked at the beginning of the thread can so easily be made to look like discrimination, but when you start to think why it is this way, some times it begins to make sense.

I think it is known as looking at the bigger picture.
Do you still think this is discrimnation?

"Match anglers are cattered for without any extra cost involved, they take over the water, bank or stretch and everyone else have to move, including the over nighters"

Thats nonsense Ged and you know it. The very few matches that are fished these days are usually publicised by the club and if you try to fish that water on that day, in defiance, whether you have been there all night or not, then must expect to be moved.

To my mind if you join a club you should be able to fish when you want on those water but I suspect, in this day and age, to avoid trouble with land owners they need to restrict night fishing due to the problems that some anglers cause, fires, drinking etc. I think you should give your name and when you are going to fish overnight to the committee, so they have a record, but not be charged extra for that privelege.

Committees in their wisdom might think differently though and look on night fishing as an extra income but I don't think you could call that discrimination, you have a choice whether or not to join under the rules laid down.

I think clubs charge their members according to their outgoings with a little extra for maintenance and improvements, I don't think for one second they take pensioners wealth or poverty into consideration when they formulate these charges.

I disagree with your last paragraph Graham.
The club that gives the choice of buying a night permit or not is reflected in the lower membership fees.