Rickards right!

Well worth a read, everything he says is correct.

The paragraph about herons highlight the kind of idle journalism we suffer from. We're being catagorised with canadian commerical fishermen with their attitude to seals.

Fishing for me is the experience of being outdoors and seeing other wildlife is as welcome as seeing a fish in my net. I have had a heron stand next to me and help itself to my bait and catch. I initially sat not daring to move until I realised that it wanted me to provide it with a meal. It was an experience I'll never forget.

Barrie what day did this appear in the Telegraph I'd like to it in full?

"How much support have pike and sea anglers had from other angling sections in Scotland? It would be nice to have answers to the last question in particular. Maybe someone like Mike Heylin knows."

Unfortunately not enough, and some sold us down the river, so to speak.

You can read the analysis of responses to the consultation at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/05/12163520/0

Here are some who voted against live baiting;
? Aberdeen and District Angling Association
? Atlantic Salmon Trust
? Beauly Angling Club
? Busby Angling Association
? Caithness and Sutherland Trout Angling Group
? Dreghorn Angling Club
? Dunning Angling Club
? Dunoon and District Angling Club
? Federation of Border Angling Associations
? Federation of Highland Angling Clubs and Associations
? Galashiels Angling Association
? lnstitute of Fisheries Management (Scottish Branch)
? Irvine and District Angling Club
? Keithick Angling Club
? Kyle of Sutherland Angling Association
? Laurieston Angling Club
? Loch Achonachie Angling Club
? Pitlochry Angling Club
? Scottish Anglers National Association ( SANA)
? Scottish Countryside Ailiance
? Stranraer District Angling Association
? Strathmore Angling lmprovement Association

PAC, PAAS and SAA fought it for pike anglers alongside a few others. But live baiting for predators was sold by "anglers".

I read Barrie's article this morning. Yes what he says is very true and straight to the point.

I used to look for herons when I fished the canal for Roach. Where there are herons wading or stood rooted to the spot there are fish. Where do these crackpots get their information from?

It isn't only outsiders to the sport who get their facts wrong. A couple of years ago a well known carp angler in his regular feature in one of our best known magazines wrote smoething approximating to: "there is only one species of carp in this country; Commons, Mirrors, Leathers and Crucians are just varieties of the same species."

I wrote pointing out the error in respect of Crucian Carp but never received a reply, nor did the magazine acknowledge the mistake although I was surely not the only person to write in.

Just got this blunder from a book I am reading.

Christchurch Harbour in Dorset is one of the very few places in Britain where the angler has the chance of catching that most rare fish, the thin-lipped Mullet.

Scientists tell us that there are two varieties of Mullet. The "thick" lipped Mullet and the "thin" lipped Mullet.

Bizzarrely, given the two names has nothing to do with the size of the lips, and in fact the only way to tell them appart is to examine the scales.

The news of this latest Brittish record took the angling world by storm.

But inevetibly given the involvment of journalists, the story came out all wrong.

The Angling Times in a ground breaking feature described it as a "Thin Legged Mullet"

The record was beaten the following year by a four year old angler. (1982).

You're right to highlight those who have sadly already left our ranks this year Barrie.

Had David Overy lived a few weeks more, he may have seen the protection for the pike of Ireland, which he fought so hard for become law.

if live baiting in scotland comes in will Aberdeen and District Angling Association also stop using maggots and worms etc ???

Hmmm. I agree with most of what Mr Rickards has to say but I find it bizarre that we are counselled not to use barbless hooks on big-fish water "in the interests of the fish" in the same article which supports live-baiting.

It's a cruel and barbaric practice which should have been banned decades ago. Most anglers, although by no means all, support conservation and fish welfare - these aims are absolutely at odds with live-baiting, particularly when fishing purely for sport.

Don't misunderstand me, I have no great problem with pike- or perch-fishing for the pot, within reason, but fishing with a lure or dead-bait is a perfectly effective alternative. I'm sure there are occasions when live-baiting might well be a marginally more productive approach but since when did "the end justifies the means" cross over from Stalin to anglers? If any approach is acceptable, are there any takers for a spot of grenade-fishing on the Witham tonight?

I'm not quite sure what a "big fish water" is - unless Barrie means the artificially and bizarrely stocked "specimen waters" so much in vogue. The ponds/lakes I manage all have big fish in - but also many small ones, which I believe deserve as much care and attention as the bigger ones.

I think it's a bit dangerous to generalise from one's own (in my case, limited!)experience but I know that barbless hooks speed up the unhooking process, which must be to the benefit of the fish. Less handling equals less trauma and less damage in MOST situations.

I do encourage the use of barbed hooks for the big carp in our lakes because I have found that they move less in the fish's mouth and on balance cause less damage. I've known big barbless hooks slit the roof of the fish's mouth.

However, I don't think that barbed hooks are necessary for the other three species. I don't seem to lose many fish on barbless although our roach have to be played and landed carefully, because they have such soft mouths that any relaxation of gentle pressure means that the hook can pop out. Crucians and tench, though, (of whatever size) very, very seldom slip the hook. A tench's lips are so rubbery that sometimes even a barbless hook is not easy to remove. Inexperienced fishermen would have difficulty removing even a micro-barbed hook in such a situation.

The important point, to me, is not whether or not you lose a fish but whether or not the fish suffers unnecessarily.

Peter Rolfe

Jim, Most experienced predator anglers will tell you that although lure and deadbait fishing is an effective alternative to livebaiting there are times when livebaiting is far more effective then both. For that reason they would like to keep the opportunity to use the method when they consider it best.

To call livebaiting a 'cruel and barbaric' practice is at odds with what most anglers believe, which is that fish are not the intelligent, friendly creatures as portrayed in Disney's Nemo, but cold-bloodied creatures that do not feel pain and do not have the mental capacity to register a 'barbaric' act.

I would suggest that anyone who has a problem with livebaiting to the extent that they think of it as 'cruel and barbaric' should hang onto that thought the next time they haul a fish from the water, via a hook through its lip, kicking and screaming as it fights to escape.

'Kicking and screaming'? Yes, a phrase right on the same humanising level as 'cruel and barbaric' when applied to fish.

Is there a difference, in principle, between a fish hanging on a hook by its lip and one hanging on a hook through another part of its body?

Are we saying that a fish tethered in the swim to be eaten by a predator is suffering some kind of mental stress?

If you think the answer to that is yes, then you surely must also agree that a fish hooked in the lip and and hauled to the net must also suffer stress.

If so, why do you do it?

And finally, to say that it's all a case of the end justifying the means and that we may as well use a grenade to catch them, well, if that were the case there is just as much sport in visiting the local chippy.

But hang on a minute, don't they sell fish that have slowly gasped their lives away in the bottom of a trawler?

Yes! well said Graham. But will the sense in what you say register in most closed minds?.

Ever had that feeling.......??

Very true Graham, I don?t have a problem with live baiting in the right circumstances, if I did I?d probably have to give up fishing. My live baiting being rolling a live minnow down a stream in high water for brown trout.

Graham writes enormous good sense as usual, but I've always had a slight unease about the assertion that "fish don't feel pain". This isn't because I think they do. I must be honest and say that if they do, it doesn't concern me. I accept that, as an angler, I may be causing a fish some suffering. That's the way of it, I'm afraid - nature red in tooth and claw and all that. As a top predator, we humnans do things like that. I don't need to justify whjat I do to others (or, more importantly, to myself) by claiming my quarry doesn't suffer.

My concern is that, if we rely on the argument and some bright spark in a lab finds a way to prove that they do feel pain one day, we are going to look pretty silly and it may undermine all the other valid and sensible things we can say in our favour.

Let's not forget that livebaiting will be banned in Scotland mainly because of the threat of the introduction of non-native species. That has been the strongest argument put before the legislators, rightly or wrongly. And who is to blame for that?
It begs the question of whether all predator anglers will get the message... I suspect the minority will continue to defy the law and ruin things for the rest of us. This Scottish ban shouldn't have a knock-on effect in the UK. There are no plans to restrict the method in the UK. Fact. The present Lake District ban falls under the same reasoning - the risk that non-natives pose to endangered salmonid species.
The cruelty issue is a dead duck. A hook in a fish is a hook in a fish whichever way you look at it. And I don't think that the reference to 'lures' means spinners, plugs, etc, although it is a curious and potentially problematic wording.

I will remind you all that there is also wild carp and now grass carp. The common and mirror carp are not the same, so i dont think that Rickards is right in everything he said.

As for live baiting long may it continue.

The common carp and the mirror carp are the same fish - Cyprinus carpio Ray, make not mistake about that. They differ due to man's interference, not through anything to do with nature.

In fact if left alone, mirror and leather carp will revert back to the common form of scaling. It happens all over the world.

I don't do much livebaiting myself these days, but neither I, nor the friends I pike fish with, have the least compunction in putting on a livebait if a suitable bait fish is available. Especially when other methods are not producing.

Ron,

if they are the same lets call them all commons, mirrors or leather.

Monks vote goes for leather!!.

in relation to what other people have siad.angling is cruel there is no other way to put it.the thing that may get angling banned is catch and release to catch a fish and stress it because it is fighting for its life and return it for somebody to do the same,is crulety no other way of saying it.i say this as an angler of 35yrs experince.the fact that a fish when taken from water makes no cry of distress ordinary people who do not fish do not percive it as being cruel.one of the most respected people on animal behaviour desmond morris once siad.if a angler on tv like john wilson was to take a fish from water and the fish cried out in distress or pain angling would be banned over night.i think anglers should start thinking straight.livebaiting is not allowed here in ireland.though still widely practised.to tether any fish to hooks is cruel so lets stop trying to make out its not.i am not anti angling i also shoot as well i am just being a realist.