Inside Out on BBC West now.

Steve Pope · Jan 9, 2012

Martin Bowler talking about the otter situation.

Worth watching I would suggest.

---------- Post added at 20:41 ---------- Previous post was at 19:32 ----------

Anyone else see it?

Not really sure what I felt watching it other than anglers are certainly in a no win situation when arguing their case against otters.

When the presenter talks of "This beautiful creature" at the outset, he certainly wasn't referring to MB!

dangermouse · Jan 9, 2012

Steve Pope said:
]Anyone else see it?

Not really sure what I felt watching it other than anglers are certainly in a no win situation when arguing their case against otters.

When the presenter talks of "This beautiful creature" at the outset, he certainly wasn't referring to MB!

Didn`t see it but it`s no surprise that it`s going to be a tough sell to a nation brought up on Tarka the Otter and Ring of Bright Water.

Lord Paul of Sheffield · Jan 9, 2012

wait till they start eating someone very expensive koi carp in the back garden pond - or they find their way in to a garden centre that sells out door fish at night - then something will get said

I watch Country file and a few months back up in scotland they were re-inroducing some large bird of prey and alreay a gamekeeper was saying they were taking lots of young pheasants and costing him £££££££££££££

Paul Boote · Jan 9, 2012

Three various to peruse, think about, then realise that all the whining and spinning in the world about, in our case, some fish that we catch, kiss then put back, even go all R.I.P. over, just won't wash with the public now, whether they're no-reader, tabloid-reader or Guardian-reader...

Raptor Persecution Scotland

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chrisfromthevalley · Jan 9, 2012

iplayer when it comes on, all talk about booze in this area, otters, i need a drink now!

smithdave · Jan 10, 2012

Not Otters again.........
This one amazes me, the same people bang on about not re-introducing a species, that gamekeepers nearly wiped out, which are native to our rivers in one thread and say "it's about being there and watching nature" in another.

Paul Boote · Jan 10, 2012

Quite, Dave, I've said the same a million times on a number of sites (to many a howl of protest and occasional point-blank threat and countless insults), but then what can you say to such blinkered, one-trick ponies and fishy bottom-liners...?

dangermouse · Jan 10, 2012

smithdave said:
Not Otters again.........
This one amazes me, the same people bang on about not re-introducing a species, that gamekeepers nearly wiped out, which are native to our rivers in one thread and say "it's about being there and watching nature" in another.

Not me. I`ve never seen an otter in the wild and I`d love to. If that means a change in the structure of the bio-mass of fish in the rivers so be it. Nature will balance it out eventually.

cg74 · Jan 10, 2012

If interested, look 18.40 in on this link: BBC iPlayer - Inside Out West: 09/01/2012

Did no one pre-warn Martin Bowler of Graham Scholey; he didn't get an MBE by getting tongue tied, an answer everything but seldom anything to back it up with!

dangermouse · Jan 10, 2012

cg74 said:
If interested, look 18.40 in on this link: BBC iPlayer - Inside Out West: 09/01/2012

Did no one pre-warn Martin Bowler of Graham Scholey; he didn't get an MBE by getting tongue tied, an answer everything but seldom anything to back it up with!

Cheers for posting that.

jasonbean1 · Jan 10, 2012

Would have been interesting to see all the talks Martin and Graham had...it was obviously cut back alot and what was shown was a desperate angler shouting out where's my big fish as usual...he did bring up the cormorant thing but do they really eat all the baby barbel that the bigguns should have been producing over the last 10-20 years?

Martin should know by now that there is a bigger problem behind all this than his simplistic and naive argument that he clearly put up and lost...

that was our chance as anglers...with one of our top having a go for us.

time the angling trust employed Graham Scholey...but fair play to Martin for upping is game a bit

Fred Bonney · Jan 10, 2012

cg74 said:
Did no one pre-warn Martin Bowler of Graham Scholey; he didn't get an MBE by getting tongue tied, an answer everything but seldom anything to back it up with!

I think Martin failed to get any point across in the short piece the public were shown.

As I've said before, if you can shout louder, and Mr Scholey appeared to do that, you win the points,whether you have facts to back you up or not!

Otters are not eating young barbel/fish because in some rivers they aren't there anyway. Only the old and fat.
IMHO something else is the problem we should be fighting for.
If we don't, we wont have any rivers, any fish, and no otter either. Otter wont survive on birds and voles, too much like hard work!

richiekelly · Jan 11, 2012

why havent the people that notified that wildlife centre about the two cubs been prosecuted, it is illegal to interfere with otters in any way, double standards!

cg74 · Jan 13, 2012

This might be an appropriate place to pass on my findings from Tuesday night; while walking the bank I passed under one of the Cherwell's many railway bridges, where there are a few large boulders, two of which were littered with a dozen or so otter turds, of varying ages, which I crumbled to see what it/they had been eating.
Not a single trace of fish remains, no scales, fish bones, just fragments of crayfish shell (signal), this does indicate a lack of fish present in the river, which is reflected by my catch returns?!

This though I doubt as the adjacent Oxford canal has a good head of fish; silvers, chub, bream and carp.

My point; over the last couple of years there have been two very noticeable declines, not the fish stock or the quantity of water (they're consistently low) but there are definitely less signal crayfish and mink....... I don't know if either will help long term with fish stocks, as without water a river can't function, which is evident looking at the increasingly silted up riffle, which of course are major losses to any river but also a build up silt serves to increase the harborage of phosphates.

Peter Jacobs · Jan 13, 2012

dangermouse said:
Didn`t see it but it`s no surprise that it`s going to be a tough sell to a nation brought up on Tarka the Otter and Ring of Bright Water.

Hhhhmmmm, wasn't Tarka killed by a pack of hounds, and I thought Mij was beheaded by a ditchdigger? . . . . . . . . in which case it shouldn't be that big a 'sell' to Joe Public?

the above posted with tongue firmly in cheek!

jasonbean1 · Jan 18, 2012

Apart from the tv programme itself and forum chat after i havent seen any magazine articles about martin and grahams meeting. i would have thought it would have been very angler news worthy, pretty much our top modern day angler meets the top EA conservation man....I would have thought martin would have wrote up a good peice on it...or have I just missed it?

Fred Bonney · Jan 18, 2012

Not seen it in the weeklies Jason, but I do tend to skip read Martin's pages. I'll have a look

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