51.4 brown sturgeon.jpg

Good catch................................../forum/smilies/tongue_out_smiley.gif

Cracking sturgeon, I hope to catch on of these this year./forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

Sorry to rain on anyone's parade - and I'm sure it fought hard - but sturgeon are migratory river fish, and it frankly breaks my heart to see them landlocked captives, being caught for fun. It's only slightly better than those game parks where they buy lions for people to shoot.

Nice catch /forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

Far due`s mark. what about commercial fisheries or lakes packed to the brim with fish they have to have airater machines cause there all fighting for oxyginated water and dying from diseases from over populated enviroments??? At the end of the day its all for sport, in the uk its gone with the days of fishing to eat and survive, its all for our fun and our enjoyment, sea fishing is a little bit different they taste nice.

Roll on the summer I can`t wait to catch & land one of these gorgeous creatures, have never caught a sturgeon I wonder how hard they fight pound for pound compared to a catfish/forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

Sturgeon were found in our water systems many years ago but werent they fished to extinction(if not) they were over fished helping to there extinction along with pollution. Whats wrong with it being in an controlled safe enviroment were anglers take great care in handling the fish out of the water. Havent chub, ZANDER been stocked to uk lakes for years and I know some uk lakes have barbel in them

None are migratory fish. They don't mind living in lakes, with the exception of barbel, which are best caught in rivers. I remember a bloke who bought a 50lb-plus cat, stocked it into his 1/4 acre pond, and then, several weeks later, eventually caught it and got in AT. Is that the future of fishing, or do we instead care for the existing wild species we have and pit our skills against instinct? Or do we just put any old fish in a lake knowing we'll eventually catch it because it now has nothing to eat but our bait?

Discuss...

Its all a matter of choice mate , you fish for what you want to catch! not for what some other gezer wants to catch. If your happy to catch sturgion from a lake then fine! who are you hurting. I have caught sturgeon from lakes and i can tell you that when they cut back through the water and launch themselves out of the water like an exocet missile they are truly an exciting spectacle. and even a 10lb sturgeon will fight like buggery.

Mark that arguement is flawed in the extreme, the roach and rudd and the perch have all been introduced into areas of the country that they are not indiginous. Carp now are getting bigger and more widely distributed in scotland, zander the same. Carp were originaly river fish before the monks put them in stew ponds, what does it matter what some guy puts in his artificial lake as long as the river systems are protected, who is it harming?

<blockquote class=quoteheader>Bill Cox wrote (see)</blockquote><blockquote class=quoteheader></blockquote><blockquote class=quote>

Its all a matter of choice mate , you fish for what you want to catch!</blockquote>

It's not just a question of choice, it's also a question of morality; how we judge what's acceptable in our sport. Would it be OK to buy a great white shark and put it in a pool of seawater to be caught again and again? Or, in a shooting analogy, fill up a cage with roe deer so they're easier to shoot? And if we did catch that shark or shoot that deer, is that sport?
I'm all for freedom of choice, but I worry that making fishing easier doesn't make it better, and that, if we could catch captive salmon, say, we will begin to forget the big problems facing wild salmon. I'm not moralising, I must add, about this sturgeon or the bloke who caught it, but just asking people to question whether holding fish in an artificial captivity in which they can't behave as they have evolved and then catching them again and again is any kind of angling advancement.

Roach, rudd and perch are all native to the UK, and - importantly - are adapted to live in lakes and rivers in the UK. Where they are not deliberately overstocked, they can feed, breed and maintain a population unaided. They are in every sense wild fish, living naturally. Carp are, as you say, introduced, but I can find no reference which says they are river fish; maybe you could post a link. I think they have always lived in both lakes and rivers and, once again, they can feed, breed and look after themselves in our waterways.

I'm not getting into the morality issue Mark, i'm asking you what harm is the guy doing? I am not even disagreeing with you on this particular bloke as far as records or achievement goes but as a broad principle i see no difference between this and stocking salmon and trout into put and take and increasingly catch and return trout fisheries. There is nowhere down my neck of the woods that i can catch Chub in a river unless i want to travel a long distance. One of our lakes has chub in it, illeagily stocked about 12 years ago by all accounts, they are certainly not easier to catch because they are in a lake. And interestingly they are breeding. what harm are those chub doing the greater good of the sport?

Putting a large fish in a small pond so you can catch it to get in the press or claim a record DOES raise a morality issue but that is not what i am saying is harmless.

Good point about the put and take trout fisheries, Bill. I, for one, enjoy fishing them so maybe I'm not as principled as I think I am! I'd certainly rather Rutland was stocked entirely with browns, or better still had its own, healthy population of them.

The debate will run and run, but for me, I think that if we spent as much time, money and effort on looking after our rivers and lakes as we did on filling holes in the ground with bought fish the 'commercial fishery' would be completely unneccessary.

The people digging holes in the ground and filling them with monster fish are business minded people just making money. Who owns and makes there own water way? Maintaining the waterways is down to EA so its totally different, if you want better improved waterway then give them more money or donate and buy yourself 100 rod license`s a season instead of one if you use up to 2 rods at any one time. A decent lake (carp and cats and other larger predators) charges between £20 and £100 per angler fishing 24 hrs, Hmmm I wonder who has the bigger profit margin Plus who offers the best general facitities and anglers such as myself are happy to pay these prices too and I always will, Personally I fish to catch large fish and the largest I possibly can but thats just how my fishing has progressed since fishing with 50p nets in shallow streams catching sticklebacks and weather loach when I was 9 or 10. This year I will be going to france fishing in pursuit of a stonking carp or a TON + cat or sturgeon, roll on the summer. Till then I will be working my arse of to pay for 48hrs fishing every other weekend all the way through the warmer months and always buying new fishing tackle, can`t wait game on. Its all down to choice

I think you missed the point, Catman.

Probably I have mark/forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif