Barrie Rickards? Angling ? A couple of Whinges

Great article save for theparagraph on theRSPB. The water was up for sale and no club or syndicate wanted to buy it.I personally find it stunning that with anglers prepared to spend hunddreds if not thousands of pounds each year on theirsport be it on tackle, day tickets, club memberships or whatever, no organisation or body was prepared to put their money with their mouth was.

Bird wtachers may be an odd bunch but the RSPB does a damngood job. It preserves habitat that might otherwise be lost to development and its record on research and conservation is second to none. While many anglers are conservation minded, theevidence of litter left on the bank, discarded lengths of line, bread and groundbaitleft to attractrats and calls for pike, cormorants and other species to be culled suggests otherwise.

Following on from the above: 'Any angler who supports this body in any way is barking mad'. Well I've been a member of the RSPB since I was kid and I ain't mad! Being both a keen angler and twitcher, then I'm well placed to comment on certain matters and one thing that is glaring obvious to meis that there is a far greater diversity of birdlife on waters where no fishing is allowed, compared to those where fishing is allowed.

To believe fishing and wildlife conservation always go hand in hand is a very naive view. Much of our bird life is in decline and the RSPB does a sterling job in trying to reverse this; in fact if wasn’t for the RSPB and other charitable conservation groups i.e. the WWT and County Wildlife Trusts then we would have already lost many bird species from the British list.

Neil

under there terms of what has been written in reply, do the rspb ban every body onto the site if not what is the difference between a twitchier. a dogwalker and a fisherman. Some of the worse litter I have seen on sites like those is from townies that do not know the country code. Fishermen have been active for more generation on rivers and lakes if they where detrimental our wild life would be nonexistent. The RSPB do great work but this has to be on show so a lot of people will be tramping around the whole site and not on the area around the lakes, these lakes where man made anyway.

Justa thought how much money does the rspb pay directly to the goverment to use the site?????????? every fishermen do pay for the privelige so gents don't you think it's about time some-one reminded them./forum/smilies/devil_smiley.gif

I had a dream............
The RSPB and the Angling bodies finally got together to preserve the wildlife on the lakes & waterways and stopped blindly banning each other from their respected lakes and rivers.

If they really did work together to protect the wildlife on, in and around the water (andnot just pay lip service)then I'm sure that the angling bodies would agree tostay away from certainareas if it was found to be detrimental to the bird life. Likewise Im sure the RSPB would be more likely to see and accept the damage being done by the cormorants; plus all the other things gleened from the huge number of hoursanglers have spent almost motionless around the waterways. But they would have to meet and talk and not just pay lip service.

But alas they still continue to bicker, meanwhile it is the wildlife that quietly suffers.

I enjoyed Barries article and I'm looking forward to him telling us about the interesting pike feeding patterns that he witnessed..

What are you suggesting Big T? That there should be a "Binoculars Licence"?

You'd have all the pervy peeping toms in Castleford (Yorks) revolting if you did that.

Nice thought though! /forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

Where tell me where 'll be right behind you/forum/smilies/wink_smiley.gif

It gets my goat when the ladeda/forum/smilies/confused_smiley.gif in the RSPD come off with their snobby crap, I worked as a wild flower nursery manager for BTCV untill this year, I was the first to start meadow regeneration in N Ireland 12 years ago and came up with a format that works so I can tell you the most hassle we had was with the RSPB. The NT where great helped out and the gov did there part but the RSPB would not help atall said it was impossible to do there fore we where lieing when we said we could do it.

It's not just the RSPB who ban anglers.

After October 30th Bank Anglers are banned from fishing the western parts of Grafham Water, the reason give, disturbance of the wildlife!

However "English Nature" haven't banned the dog walkers, cyclists and others from the area, but they have banned Anglers.

Colin

Taken from The Thames Society website http://www.riverthamessociety.org.uk/index.htm

On their education page - a picture of two anglers fishing from a boat.


In their aims etc. "Seeking more public mooring points and other visitor facilities"

On a piece of land we used to fish from - Some welcome

And our fishing club actually help the b'stards to restore this bit of land!

Wild birds,and i do mean WILD,would be far better off without the RSPB.they are just a bunch of tossers with a load of money who have to do (stupid)things to justify their wages ,and as for Bill Oddey,just don't go there./forum/smilies/angry_smiley.gif

I agree with Mike, Neil and Mark M. Whilst there may be some questionable people in the RSPB, you cannot use that as a reason for condemning theorganisation itself i(and please, let's drop the childish "tossers/loadsamoney" jibes...). There are dodgy types in all organisations (including those connected with angling...), but that doen't mean the organizations themselves are worthless.

As a previous post says, we need to co-operate and form relationships withgroups with related interests to our own.

Wasting millions on the Langholm Moore project,the Golden Eagle fiasco,accusing someone at Sandringham of shooting a Hen Harrier without a scrap of evidence,but the damage is done,......may take part in their survey to count the birds in my garden,(i live near a council "nature reserve" so the answer will be nill unless i count Corvids.!!

Interesting, sort of, that most of the comments so far are defensive re the RSPB - a body about which I too have always been suspicious, since they are just too big, powerful, rich, influential etc to co-operate freely & willingly with the relatively ineffectual, powerless angling bodies, with which they do not always share a common interest anyway...

The latter owes much to your other point, the disunity among anglers and between them and participants in other fieldsports. I was involved in BASS a long time ago, and well recall suggesting at an AGM that there was far more in common between us and fox-hunters than than there was dividing us - to hoots of derision and evident hostility! The fact is that the antis hate all fieldsports, and simply go for the easy ones first. Later, they'll seek to ban angling... Anglers really have to be less shortsighted and clannish.

No-one has commented on the du Broff/carp thing, which surprises me! I thought carp anglers would rush en masse to vilify the guy... I recognise the name of du Broff - certain he's been around for years, think I've probably read him in Field & Stream years ago. His ideas might seem extreme, but they reflect the core of N.American angling thought, which is that carp are little better than vermin because they grub around on the bottom and turn any water into which they're introduced into a mudpool, screwing up 'real' fishing - i.e. lure fishing for predatory fish, principally bass. I have a lot of sympathy with this - just ask me if I'dchoose tosquat in some bivvy by a muddy pool for days on end trying to hook a damn great lumpy carp, or instead go casting plugs among the treeroots or lilypads questing for a lively bass! Sidney du Broff might seem a bit grumpy but I think you're over-reacting yourself.

Regards, Malcolm (who read your books on lure fishing over 25 years ago)

If I remember rightly Australia also treat Carp as an alien species and made it alleagle to return them to the waters where they are caught and also Germany as well. I don't know if the Carp in America are native or not but the most "common" one ie king carp is not the species that are "native" to here anyway. Where do we draw the line vis-a-vis native and introduesed species? after all some of our best caught fish ie Zander,Barbel,carp and catfish are all let loose in our rivers god knows what the long term affects they will have.

Yep,the Aussies use dynamite to get rid of carp,the yanks use bow and arrows,and the Canadians just keep publishing nice recipes .!!!!!/forum/smilies/baring_teeth_smiley.gif

With regards to the RSPB.here's what they do.....collect money from gullible townies who are mainly influenced by Beeboids,set up nature reserves (professional countryside managers call them "sinks"),improve the habitat and the birds move in,the breeding rate is poor but the populations increase by being drawn in from other areas,then they check on their welfare by taking the young from their nests, weighing them,stretch their wings to measure them,measure the length of their beaks ,and anything else they can think to terrify the poor things,then they all go to view this wonder of "nature".................................then the predators move in and it all goes down the plughole..........not good for rare species./forum/smilies/angry_smiley.gif

At the end of the day it's far better to leave nature alone, one of the problems is except in remote areas like the highlands and snowdonia we have rearranged all the habitats to suit our selves. nature and man have been living in each others pockets for generations. Where things are different is the amount of poison's we use in farming, this where nature can't co-exist with man, but assoon as the use of chemicals is halted nature can work it's miracles all over again. So sometimes this scam of the "habitat" creation is nothing more than a money spinner. I was born and bred in a farming village called Minsterworth near Gloucester and also spent the last 15 years in the recreation of woodlands and wild flower margins and meadows on set aside. this was targeting nothing more than insects and Butterfly's the rest was left to develop on it's own we found that is the only way it can work. The best and most progressive thing any-one can do is stop using pesticides and herbicides nature will come back within a few seasons.

Tristantona - Isincerely hope thatyour previous 713 posts show a greater level ofgeneral tolerance to the wider worldthan yourcurrent 3 posts contained on this thread! Are you completely blinkered in your quest to catch fish?

Also let me elaborate on what I alluded to earlier about how angling and intense wildlife conservation doesn’t go hand in hand. I bailiff a carp lake of several acres; generally when I go down at the weekends there are a couple of members bivvied up. On such days the winter birdlife consists of a few Tufted Duck, plenty of Coots and a couple of resident Great Created Grebes. A couple of weeks ago I went to the water to find no one fishing. Bird wise and in addition to those already mentioned the lake now held 100+ Wigeon, 50+ Teal, 8 Shoveler, 6 Gadwall, 200+ Lapwing, 30+ Curlew, 2 Oystercatchers…………. So in short undisturbed lakes hold a far greater diversity and numbers of birdlife, and hence why the RSPB are unlikely to allow fishing on lakes/wetlands that it manages. In short there is room in this country for both fishing and wildlife conservation; however with the exception of very large waters then it just isn’t practical to manage a single water to its greatest potential on both counts.

Neil

Me blinkered,you don't appear able to see the wood for the trees,of course the RSPB will ban angling,they'll be too busy disturbing the birds themselves lol.you seem wellup on bird I.D.most of the birds you mention move in with the cold weather,lapwings are not water birds of course and are on the increase thanks to better land management,also you should take into account the food available to the fowl nearby,as contrary to the beliefe of many people wildfowl do not usually feed on a diet of Mothers Pride.....as for my quest to catch fish i usually take a severely disabled mate with me and just mess about with vintage rods and old centrepins myself as that's what gives me pleasure,i have no aspirations to make a name for myself as an angler either by catching fish or just coming on here and talking about it ! I'll just leave you with this thought,a couple of years ago the guy who won the top award for conservation in Scotland was asked whilst being presented with a trophy "what is the biggest threat to birdlie" to which he replied "scottish natural heritage and the RSPB"..

Shock, horror, amenity group sticks up for its members and puts it money where its mouth is! Lets get real here, I make mo claims to be a scientist or an ornithologist, but it seems pretty obvious that you set aside a piece of land for wildlife, that it (wildlife) will thrive better than in areas where they have to co-exist with human acclivity, be it industry, farming or leisure. Whether we like it or not, the RSPB acquired that water fairly and squarely on the open market. Let’s be realistic, commercial fisheries are owned or leased by businessmen, who may be anglers, but at the end of the day are there to turn a profit. Nothing wrong with that, it’s the way of the world. When the lease expires, or they get a good offer from the RSPB, a developer or anybody else they will take the money and run. We can moan all we like but that’s’ the way it is. . What makes me sad is that angling is a multi-million pound industry, with its participants willing to spend hundreds, and sometimes thousands of pounds a year on tackle, bait, clothing, club membership, day tickets, travel costs etc. If the sport could not be bothered to put its hand in its pocket to buy the water then anglers have no one to blame but themselves.As for the RSPB being anti-angling, it may be, it may not, I simply don’t know. What I do know is that if we don’t get our act together and stop squabbling amongst ourselves then the sport is at risk from the antis.