E
Evan NotMightyAtAll
Guest
If you get caught fishing without a rod licence then its a magistrates court summary offence and a financial penalty that smarts.
What if fishing without a club book or day/week/ month/ guest ticket were similarly to be made a mags court summary offence ? With an appropriately painful fine to discourage repetition and others.
If not why not ?
I don't agree with new laws for the sake of it but it did strike me that this could be the answer to quite a number of problems.
For those of our Eastern European friends canny enough to buy a rod licence but then go poaching it's a further required step towards enforcement and poaching prevention.
For landowners / clubs / bailiffs it is a hell of a lot better than the present unsatisfactory state of the purely civil law of trespass.
Trespass gives no power to do anything but require the perpetrator to leave the land, using reasonable force if he won't leave. However the Tony Martin case and others demonstrates just how risky actually exercising that theoretical entitlement to self help can be. The right to damages for trespass in the case of somone fishing is generally trivial and not worth sueing for, especially as you won't get your costs paid even if you win.
And it must be a right pain having to call out a Police Constable to attend, let alone distracting them from more useful tasks.
So why shouldn't fishing without a ticket be made a summary offence too ?
What if fishing without a club book or day/week/ month/ guest ticket were similarly to be made a mags court summary offence ? With an appropriately painful fine to discourage repetition and others.
If not why not ?
I don't agree with new laws for the sake of it but it did strike me that this could be the answer to quite a number of problems.
For those of our Eastern European friends canny enough to buy a rod licence but then go poaching it's a further required step towards enforcement and poaching prevention.
For landowners / clubs / bailiffs it is a hell of a lot better than the present unsatisfactory state of the purely civil law of trespass.
Trespass gives no power to do anything but require the perpetrator to leave the land, using reasonable force if he won't leave. However the Tony Martin case and others demonstrates just how risky actually exercising that theoretical entitlement to self help can be. The right to damages for trespass in the case of somone fishing is generally trivial and not worth sueing for, especially as you won't get your costs paid even if you win.
And it must be a right pain having to call out a Police Constable to attend, let alone distracting them from more useful tasks.
So why shouldn't fishing without a ticket be made a summary offence too ?