Catching to eat.

Hi All,

There have been stories in our local press in Cambridge about the problem posed by some foreign labourers catching coarse fish to eat, especially carp. This perplexes me. I'd always assumed that coarse fish were called "coarse" because they were not good to eat, unlike trout or salmon. But that seems not to be true. In fact one cook-book I picked up to check (Floyd on France) had recipes for perch.

I can see that catching fish to take home from commercial lakes would be wrong, and is presumably against the rules of the venue, but what are the laws and the etiquette governing the removal of fish in our other lakes, rivers, and canals?

Cheers,

Tim.

If the waters are owned by a club, it is regarded as theft if you take their fish without permission!

Don't bother Tim, they taste like CACK!!!

The problem is of course many of the Eastern Europeans eat coase fish as part of their staple diet, many of the british species are readily available on the Eastern and indeed western Eurpean markets. With the exception of the game species however, many british specie are owned, so basically to take them for the table is theft

Amongst "coarse" fish - perch, zander, eels and grayling are very good eating. I've eaten the lot in my time, including bream which are horrid and tench which are quite good.

Pike are full of little nasty bones. Gudgeon are very good indeed.

The best eating fish in British freshwaters, and I include all the game species here, is the zander.

its a strange law governing fish,taking fish from a still water without consent is theft wether there is public access or not but taking fish from rivers is only theft if its done from private land (no public access)all river fish are covered by local bylaws & national bylaws as to numbers and size of stated fish which may be taken for ones personal use and are the property of the envioment agency who's job it is to maintain numbers and welfare of the fish which as at one point or another bread and stocked a good proportion of the fish.check your local & national bylaws out as too take beyond those prescribed limits you could be liable for huge fines ! (only if someone enforces the law!!)

Simple message is



"Do not do it"

I don't do it either. The last time I ate zander was in Poland.

The term: "Coarse Fish" is actually quite recent. At the time of the Mundella act of 1878 which created the coarse fish closed season we know now, all non-salmonids including grayling were known as "Freshwater Fish". This may be due to the fact that only Salmon and Brown trout have a tendency to migrate to the sea. The rest stay in freshwater of course.

At some time during the turn of the last century, ie: 1899/1900, the term "Coarse Fish" raised it's head. It may have been game fishers who created the term.

The term: "Coarse Fish" is virtually unknown outside the British Isles. Americans classify Northern Pike, Muskies, Black Bass, together with all their salmonids as Game Fish.

Pike is a classic of french cuisine and excellent if properly prepared. Which takes time, care and expertise. If not properly prepared then it is memorably described as like eating cotton wool balls stuffed with pins...

Plus which pike is only really edibly worthwhile if about 3 to 4 pounds in weight. Above that it starts to go tough fibrous and tasteless. So there is no real threat to any bigger specimen pike and there is hardly an insane rush to clear them out of all of our waters by gangs of Eastern Europeans or mad eyed French gourmet chefs !

Perch tastes excellent, as good as brown trout IMHO, but I never took any for the pot when younger / in the 70's / 80's during the first active phase of my coarse fishing life as they were then - as a result of that disease, the name of which I cannot now remember - very very rare and near extinct in certain areas.

Since then Perch are now very healthily re-established and I have no problem with the odd one being taken for the pot - where legal under the fishery rules of course.

Again Perch don't seem to be the central target for european attack...

Bream, Roach, Tench I have tried but none worth the effort even slightly. Muddy muddy and more muddy flavour with no real texture, even lightly steamed.

Contd.

So that leaves.... the real subject of all this hysteria, our good old friend the Carp.

Which, let's face it, tastes lovely.

An absolute classic of both French and Oriental cuisine. It used to be what Catholics inland survived on for Fridays in the middle ages - ever wondered why so many old monasterys had stew ponds ? Carp, carp 'n more carp, fed on vegetable peelings and fattened up like pigs.

If Carp anglers want to get hysterical about all Carp everywhere then that's simply going too far.

I can quite understand the upset and outrage for private fishery owners with an investment to protect. But protected species status required for all Carp ? Including wild Carp in natural free waters ? Which it is what it would have to be to make it illegal to take any fish from any water.

Simply barking. Following the lead of the likes of the RSPB in getting everything but everything with feathers on made a protected species regardless..... (stick feathers on a pig with blu tak and pork would be off the menu !)

Carp is hardly a species under threat.... to the contrary, much to other species detriment.

To be honest I have no problem with the odd fish being taken - where legal - for the pot. In the 1940's - 50's and up to the 60's most match anglers divvied up the better fish in the catch for the pot before returning home. This very much greater level of predation (and back then they had 200 + peg events don't forget) than present European inroads didn't seem to clean out the rivers in ten minutes flat at all. And these were the polluted and much less populated rivers of yesteryear.

The real problems as I see it are the venues, the methods and the quantity of fish removed.

Venue: private waters obviously have private rights. Absolute bans the owner's privilege. Enforcement more difficult but possible. Enclosed still waters not so much a problem. It is rivers owned or managed by clubs that are wide open. The mileage un-policeable even if all members patrolled the banks all day long.

Methods: should be restricted to rod and line alone. As the law stands that is already the case as I understand it (except for the limited exception for nets to take crayfish out (and damned good and tasty news that is too !) and Salmon nets in Scotland).

I recently found my first set of illegal fixed lines set around a lake I know, so the problem is not a fiction made up by the hysterical. On the other hand two fixed lines, while illegal, horrible and bloody nasty do not exactly threaten the overall fish population of that lake in any significant way.

Quantity: I have no idea what the rules on quantity or size of particular species of fish are that you are permitted to take in any particular river authority area. I understand that they each have such rules but they are given no publicity at all. Even to someone like myself who would like to know what they are and look them up and implement them. When I was a kid these rules used to be printed on the reverse of my rod licence. A simple measure and inexpensive. Or a standard sign posted by waterways. Nowadays ?
If I, as an interested angler, haven't a clue what the rules are then how many Eastern European chappies do you expect to know ?

So I conclude..... there are two main problems:

Enforcement. Existing rules which are adequate if enforced. They aren't. It simply isn't practicable to do so over the miles and miles of water in this country

Education. Requires water and local authorities to publish those rules so ignorance cannot be pleaded by any more people armed with spear guns "mussel fishing" to even more ignorant policemen. That at least is possible, by signs, boards and posters. But at a cost.... the odd sign here and there may not seem to cost very much. Multiply that by all the waters in the land and translation into three or four languages. There simply isn't the money for it.

So.... I don't have any easy answers but the one thing I wouldn't counsel is the sort of stupid "Dunblane" knee jerk reaction suggested by the Carp lobby banning all fish being taken for the pot.

I have no problem with the odd fish being taken on rod and line for non-commercial personal consumption where legal and within appropriate size limits and numbers. It is not a privilege I often exercise - I don't think I have taken a fish away from any water in the last five years or so and I do not plan a trawling spree any time soon - but it is not a privilege I feel inclined to lose either.

Don't think anyone minds if it's done legally Evan. Problem is due to the number of club owned waters there are very few 'free' stretches anywhere making almost all fish removal illegal, i.e theft.

I don't know of any club owned waters with anything other than a catch and release policy in force except for game fish.

I have had Zander in France recently and it was very tasty indeed.

And for the avoidance of doubt I have no intention of seeking to defend poaching gangs with nets trawling out fish at night to supply commercial restaurants or community centres full of fellow immigrants....

I am simply concerned with the risk that hysteria about the subject poses to my rights as a law abiding citizen to take the odd appropriate fish for the pot.

If certain groups of anglers want to regard certain fish and species of fish as if they were their children and make them all sacrosanct in eating terms that is their privilege, but not a justification for losing my British freedoms and rights to knee jerk draconian laws on the back of it.

And before anyone seeks to make such an argument could they please make it clear that they are strict Vegans as otherwise no correspondence will be entered into.....

Dunblane is a good example. It destroyed the sport of many law abiding citizens, a sport we were actually quite good at, in favour of a nil reduction in gun crime.

To the contrary, it has made hand guns more valuable - simple demand and supply, basic economics: reduce supply and price increases - therefore more profitable.

Add to that what is called the "crime tarrif" of value and the upshot is that guns are now more easily available to the bad guys than ever before.

Very sensible comments Evan. A few things to add to the above:

No-one can legally take fish on rod and line in England or Wales - whether to eat or to return - without a current rod licence. The type of licence depends on the target species; if migratory salmonids are the on the menu the appropriate licence must be held.

That which follows assumes that the means of taking the fish is by rod and line only; netting, set-lines, poisoning etc are outside the scope of my knowledge.

I believe (I am still trying to ascertain a definitive ruling) that an individual, in possession of a valid licence can, by use of rod and line, take up to two mature fish of any species, in season, per day. There are some proviso's however:

Mature fish are fish over a certain size limit; these limits, at one time, used to vary from one regional River Board or Authority to another; whether there is a nationally applied set of size limits now we have the EA I don't know. It is illegal to take any fish under the relevant size limit.

The fish can only be taken from un-enclosed waters* (i.e. canals and rivers) and only from a point of public access; to do so from a privately owned stretch of bankside would constitute trespass, although I don't know if charges of poaching could be made to stick if the fish are not stocked by the landowner in question. Anyone reading this with knowledge of the laws regarding salmon poaching?

*It is possible that, on some enclosed lakes or lochs not privately owned (e.g National Trust) the same rules apply as for rivers. Clarification needed here too.

From the above it is reasonably clear that the carp lobby (a title of convenience intended to imply no disrepect to those concerned) need not fear that the present laws (at least as I understand them) do not protect the carp in lakes up and down the country. Enforcement of those laws is another matter, and one which needs to be addressed.

However, before anyone can begin to implement a course of (re)action, the EA needs to publish, in a form that the layman can understand, what those current laws are.

Evan, I love to eat meat and fish.

So my question is why would anyone want to take a fish for the pot, under the existing laws? How many people exercise their right to do so? I would believe hardly anyone does so.

So my argument is simple, ban taking fish for the pot. There can then be no confusion what so ever. It would then be illegal and therefore a crime.

As I said above, there are adequate, if little known, laws in place regarding the taking of fish; the problem is enforcement. Introducing a complete ban will only serve one purpose, which is to make it that bit easier for those wishing to remain ignorant of the law to assess if a crime has taken place.

Incidentally, I do occasionally take a pike, eels or trout to eat.

I agree about enforcement Fred, but I don't understand how it would need to be assessed if a crime had taken place?
If a complete ban was introduced and someone was caught taking fish, then that's it, a crime has been committed.

Another thing - if taking fish to eat were banned would that extend to sea fishing? If so I can forsee that fishing itself would not be far beind.

Consider this: anyone over the age of 18 can apply for a shotgun licence with a good chance they'll get it, providing they do not have a criminal record and they can prove that a) the weapon will be adequately and securely stored and b) that it will only be used on private land with the landowner's permission in writing. It is still the right of the common man to shoot game in season for the purposes of eating.

Why then should we treat the catching of fish as any different? We are in danger of becoming excessively sentimental about our fish, particularly where we shift our concerns from the preservation of fish stocks in general to the preservation of individual 'target' fish.

Fred:

I too have read here and there that you can take up to two mature fish a day.

What I equally haven't been able to find (and before my heart attack stopped play I was a lawyer of over 20 years experience in hunting down such minutiae of the law, so I am no beginner at looking) is confirmation of this assertion in statute or national statutory instrument; or any definition by species, size or weight of just what is / constitutes "mature".

The old river authoritys did at least have local statutory instruments / regulations which they made some effort to publish and dissemminate - not least by putting them on the back of the old fashioned rod licence, as I have pointed out.

What I am not clear about is what happened to these local SI's / regulations with the abolition of the local water authorities and the institution of the EA and national rod licence.

I suspect - tho as I say, I have not found a definitive answer - that the old local SI's and regs were never abolished, so have continuing force in theory, but no longer have any local enforcement body.

Equally that nobody gave thought to a new uniform SI or code of regs to govern the new national river authority.

Poaching is complicated, not least because of the differences between English and Welsh law and that north of the border (about which I know nothing).

I don't believe that it is in any way way dependent on the owner having stocked the water or not. The old distinction of Ferrae naturae v. domestic is possibly still good law (see Albert Haddock's misleading cases and the example of the vicious garden snail....) but largely irrelevant.

If a domestic animal is on your land you own it and it is theft to kill it or take it.

If a wild animal is (for a time) on your land / in your water then anyone else killing it is poaching as I understand it.

Gets a bit more complicated with domestically bred animals released into the wild for sport (eg. Pheasants) which cross or blur the boundaries and I don't pretend to be an expert in such arcane legal complexities

Steve:

"So my question is why would anyone want to take a fish for the pot, under the existing laws?"

Because

(a) every now and then I DO want to (Perch especially, yummy)

(b) I am entitled to if I want to, it is my right as a Briton

(c) I don't think it is any business of anyone elses to start taking away my rights, chipping away at them, unless and until there is some good and compelling reason to take that right away. Think about all the other rights you would rather not have someone having a go at before getting too enthusiastic about messing with other peoples'.

(d) the number of people exercising a right is irrelevant. Either is there is good and compelling reason to take that right away or there isn't.

(e) what is the virtue or logical justification in citing "avoiding confusion" as the basis to take away people's rights ? You might as well make it illegal to drive so as to remove any confusion over speed limits...

(f) there is more than enough obsessive control freak law making going on at the moment without opening yet another channel of it.