Otters – Action at Last?

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Otters – Action at Last?

You couldn't make it up. Note the similarity of the new body's name to E.D.L. (check EDL out, such nice, sensitive, caring, patriotic lads...).

Cross of St George, anyone? The odd bit of lakeside ethnic cleansing?

Desperate. Shabby. Pathetic. Doomed to fail.

Merry Christmas.

I just wish anglers who should be in the know could be objective with there views ....it appears as usual that quotes get re-quoted without any regard for fact. bob roberts and now ian welch are using the old evenlode, cherwell and windrush one which i think was first brought about by trefor west. If any one in particular ian would like to know about the demise of barbel on the cherwell please feel free to pm me.

why another group ?...surely pag are doing this supposed work with predation issues, if john wilson and danny fairbrass are not getting anywhere hows another small fragmented militant bunch of misinformed anglers going to get anywhere. to tackle predation issues you have to be in consultation with the right people using fact and not fiction...and chances are they still wont listern, theres not the importance in angling in these hard pressed times to spend money on cormorant culls, understanding and eradicating signal crayfish(bigger threat than otters) and no way will there will be any leaway with controlling otters...why i'm going on about this again i don't know.....being subjective in there views and quotes will not wash with the likes of graham scholey, a man with true conviction who worked hard to get what he wanted and skin thicker than a rhino's arse

Otters. Native species. Carp. Introduced species. Er, no chance. I am sorry if carp anglers - now a breed which only buys into the syndicate if it can PROVE that there are 40s to catch - are losing the occasional tame carp to otters during the winter, when otters are starving and carp are torpid.

But this carp angler not only needs to think a bit more deeply about the aims of his group, but also take a long, hard look at himself and decide whether his fishing is aspirational and interesting, or whether, if he took up shooting, he'd like to join the ranks of the ******-up hooray Henrys and 'enjoy' a day gunning down a steady stream of driven pheasants which can barely fly, or whether, to continue the analogy, he'd rather wander the fields looking for opportunities, rejoicing in the good days when a few birds come his way.

Paul Boote puts is tersely and intelligently - doomed to fail. If it doesn't, I will disown fishing for the rest of my life. Just as I have disowned carp fishing, which is now about as far from the pioneering spirit of Walker as it could be.

From all I've seen elsewhere, Mark Holmes is a decent fella. I had an inkling that something like this might be in the pipeline a couple of months ago. However, while I can well understand the frustration, I happen to disagree with this particular stance. It won't do angling and anglers any good in the long term.

I wish them well but...

I don't think I will be betraying any confidences but at the last ATr freshwater committee meeting it was felt that any actions taken re: otters would be better coming from the 'commercial' side of angling so as not to put 'angling', as in clubs, associations and even the ATr, in a bad light with the general public. Although it is accepted otters are doing a great deal of damage to both stillwater and river fisheries, for anglers to be seen demanding the slaughter of the nations current favourite cuddly animal would be madness.

May-be Martin Salter can make progress coming from a political angle?

...or maybe they will all die from the bile fluke many of the captive bred animals suffered from?

What bunch of ill-informed *******, who sadly can only draw opinions from other scare mongering no-nothings; “We’ve seen two of the finest barbel fisheries in history – Adams Mill and Sayers Meadow – destroyed and the upper Thames, Cherwell and Evenlode have been devastated and now my beloved Kennet is beginning to suffer badly.” said Ian

The quote above about sums it all up! And let me guess, once the otters had feasted so heavily on the Kennets barbel, they got a dose of the squits and drank the river dry: Betjeman's beloved Kennet runs dry and raises fears for England's rivers | Environment | The Observer
Or
BBC News - Kennet and Avon Canal water levels lowest for 90 years

Now here's a question to everyone on this forum; how many barbel, or any other fish species, have YOU seen dead on the bank of the upper Thames, Cherwell, Evenlode and to broaden it further, the Windrush?

Beany, I know you've seen one at Thrupp, a 5lber which by the time it'd been BFW'ed had become a brace of doubles.

Now don't get me wrong, there are issues of predation that need addressing but rather than wasting time and effort on what will prove a wholly fruitless task, just to save worn out old fish, that are to be brutally honest past their natural life expectancy because they are the favoured target of some.

Usual load of cobblers from "anglers" who should know better.

Welcome back Fred, and a happy Christmas

Thank you John, and to you too.

This sounds just the same as the pigeon fanciers wishing to have all Peregrines removed so even the oldest/silliest pigeon gets home. No more brain cells than their pets in my opinion...

Not read article and dont want to , tired of all this talk .

Yeah otters native species but the population dropped because of lack of food its called nature finding a balance unfortunatley they have now been reintroduced legally and more importantly illegally and the food stocks cant sustain them so they move onto lakes full of carp purposely stocked for fishing , something will give in the end , be it fishery owners taking the law into their own hands or the otter population finding a natural level , I honestly believe that commorants are a bigger threat !!!!!!!!!!!

iceman22 said:

Not read article and dont want to , tired of all this talk .

Yeah otters native species but the population dropped because of lack of food its called nature finding a balance unfortunatley they have now been reintroduced legally and more importantly illegally and the food stocks cant sustain them so they move onto lakes full of carp purposely stocked for fishing , something will give in the end , be it fishery owners taking the law into their own hands or the otter population finding a natural level , I honestly believe that commorants are a bigger threat !!!!!!!!!!!

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Carp have got to be the most unnatural species in most lakes? I fished all my youth in two huge lakes near Canterbury and only ever heard of carp because of **** Walker. I think they were probably very local originally; Just breed as a source of protein. Monasteries and the like...

Sorry to be the odd man out here - I know we've been through it all before - but IMHO anyone who doesn't object to otters is a turkey voting for Christmas. I'm not a carp angler, I fish for everything, and that's what otters target... everything. There is a reason they were hunted down as vermin for so many years, the same reason as we hunted wolves!
On their own they can be likened to a single BB shot at angling: a small but significant problem, same as abstraction, cormorants, discharges, nitratres etc etc. But when we put all these threats together, it becomes a twin-barreled shotgun blast which could kill angling as we know it. We need to back these kind of initiatives the same as we would back anti-pollution lobbyists. Dismissing a group who are merely trying to save angling from predation threats is counter-productive. And likening them to neo-facist groups is not the way forward These are very probably guys just like you and I who love their fishing and just want to save it from what they (and I) see as a PC culture gone mad.

Nope, sorry Geoff, otters aren't cockroaches or rats that we humans need to contain and cull, but an altogether different order of animal. Some - a selfish few - of 'us' "Anglers", though, find them inconvenient, with them impacting on their sporting castles built on sand and little private pleasures, and so wish to disappear them - Pfff! and they're gone - so very 19th Century, "...the Estate Keepers (soon to be mown down big-time in the Great War) will deal with them...", so very Good Old Days, so very Big House ("Oo! The frocks are nice!") Downton Shabby...

They (ECDL) say that the current angling bodies (ATr) are not doing enough.
Are they even members of say the ATr? Perhaps if they and the many 100'000's like them were to join the ATr it might be better able to 'do something'

Its all well and good these carp anglers moaning about not being represented, but I know for a fact (c2004-6) that very many high profile anglers, some who earn a living/income from angling were not even members of the SAA before the days of the ATr. They couldn't be &rsed then so why should they change the habit of a lifetime now, even when they think their sport is under threat. I also know those who were, so thank you.

I may be doing these carp anglers/syndicates an injustice and they are in fact members of the ATr, but going on the numbers of my own club, and especially the carp 'specialist angler section' as they like to be referred to, if more than 0.025% have taken up membership they will be bucking the trend!

Embarrassingly I am the single ATr member of my own clubs 14 strong management committee, a fact that I continually remind them of
I even had to threaten to resign to get the committee to buy the ATr raffle tickets; we are members of the ATr & FL so that is a small start.

Yes I know (before someone reminds me) I had my own issues with the ATr, but hardly anything (in a reasonably democratic society such as ours) gets changed from the outside.

And lets not forget, had it not been for 'representatives' of specimen/carp anglers, those same carp anglers would most likely be doing weekend/week or whatever length sessions sat behind a single rod. Then we have to ask the question, had that been the case would we now have 'carp' or even syndicate fishing as we know it? Then would otters matter at all? As the last SAA newsletter was called 'Specialist Matters' To some, but apparently not many, and not enough.

Paul Boote said:

Nope, sorry Geoff, otters aren't cockroaches or rats that we humans need to contain and cull, but an altogether different order of animal. Some - a selfish few - of 'us' "Anglers", though, find them inconvenient, with them impacting on their sporting castles built on sand and little private pleasures, and so wish to disappear them - Pfff! and they're gone - so very 19th Century, "...the Estate Keepers (soon to be mown down big-time in the Great War) will deal with them...", so very Good Old Days, so very Big House ("Oo! The frocks are nice!") Downton Shabby...

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That's a bit disingenuous. I believe my comparison was with wolves Paul, not cockroaches or rats.

We are all entitled to our opinions and I think this is a worthy cause worth supporting. I too have issues with the name - but for different reasons - and have written to ask him to drop the word Carp from whatever title they end up with to widen the membership appeal to all anglers.

geoff ....the whole thing is a waste of time, the same as trying to get people like you to see things for what they really are. angling cannot unite and support one governing body, let alone support 2 anti otter groups?

Nope. I know everything there is to know about disingenuous and loaded replies, after over of a decade of them from individuals and cliques on the Internet. It's boiling down to this: we Anglers can't act like mardy, foot-stamping, tantrum-throwing "I'll thwceam and thwceam until I am thick" Violet Elizabeth Botts in a Just William story anymore.

geoffmaynard said:

We are all entitled to our opinions and I think this is a worthy cause worth supporting. I too have issues with the name - but for different reasons - and have written to ask him to drop the word Carp from whatever title they end up with to widen the membership appeal to all anglers.

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Why not NUBA, even