LITTERBUGS

I fish the free stretch of the river Tees at Darlington, and it concerns me that so many fishermen (and not just the young uns) are leaving litter. bags,tins and the like.
It is starting to spoil the fishing now, because there is litter going in the river too.
For example, I was fishing on saturday, and I started the day well with a 5lb 8oz chub, and then 2hrs later the whole day was spoiled by bags, bottles etc floating down the river. Twice I was fooled into thinking I had a bite, but the 1st time it was a carrier bag caught on my hook and the 2nd time it was a pair of shorts.

All this littering has got to be affecting the pollution level, not to mention the fish habitats. But what can we do about it? I have also not seen a water bailiff at all this year, which is annoying as half the people who fish this stretch dont have licences!
Makes you wonder why we buy our licences in the first place

ive seen the same sort5 of thing sea fishing. some one left a half filleted makeral and half a crab with fishing line and hooks just laying in the middle of the beech. if i find line or hooks i always take them home and bin them takes no effort at all. but it would be nice if every one could take their rubbish home.

And we wonder why councils etc ban fishing. Mind you I think fly-tipping is far worse than anglers' mess in my part of the world.

Oh dear! Oh dear!
Jason what you have said is not only related to anglers. Whilst the problem you state appears to be so, it is much more deeply rooted in today’s society.
We as a society are dirty B*****ds in the UK.
Our streets are strewn with dropped rubbish, as are most pocket green open space on housing estates with items of unwanted furniture put there by someone who lives near by.
Attempt to speak to one of these environmental vandals, and you told to go and copulate.
I don’t know about where you live but in Manchester the Council, and I usually have very few good words to say about them, run free, yes free, bulky refuge service that will pick up any item within seven days. It has a One Stop Shop service Tel No, so you don’t have to ring endless department to get that rubbish removed. AND still people discard rubbish in the way I’ve described.

Thankfully it is now getting very heavy with these people and goes through bags of rubbish, chairs, sofas, etc to try and establish evidence (letter, bills, etc) where they came from. If evidence is found they take the person/people to court.
They are cute with it as well, using the civil courts not the criminal courts. The reason they use the civil court is the proof of evidence is less than the criminal courts, as its based on the balance of evidence as apposed to near absolute proof.

They have been known to use very small portable cameras to catch industrial scale fly-tippers.

The moral is, if you see people doing this type of activity REPORT THEM. Take details of cars, vans times and anything else that you think will be of use to make it stick.
Well that’s enough praising of Manchester Council from me because most of the other services are complete crap, but that’s for other topics elsewhere on this site.

Re EA and Bailiffs and no show. If you are concerned, phone your local office and complain as a licence pay about it not being bailiffed and people getting away with it. I bet it soon gets some attention then.
It will also help if you say you’re going to contact your MP about it as well

havant council do a simular thing with the rubbish but last time i phoned i was told at least 8 weeks before they could collect.

our club controls a 2 mile+ stretch of water just south of cambridge......i doubt if we get enough rubbish to fill one black bin bag during the course of a season.

we have no bins on site and all the anglers must take there litter home.

why do we have not litter??????? because there is no public access to the river at this point.

not all anglers are litter bugs, we have 150+ members.

i have only had to pick up one lot of rubbish so far this season, and that was tuesday, a drunk was sleeping it off near our carpark. he left 2 empty cans on the river bank and one in the water, plus the bloody plastic can holder lying in the grass.

he was not a member of the club or an angler.......i think he knows now it is private property.

the public areas of the river Cam have a big litter problem, thing is it is not the anglers who are the litter bugs. it's the hoards of foreign students who meet down there for parties......plus the hoorah henrys with their punts.

Yes the problem is occuring because it is a public stretch of the river. What makes it worse is that it is also part of the Pennine Way.
Phil I have contacted E.A several times - they seem pretty indifferent to me. Maybe they dont have the budget to police it?
It's a shame because there are so many ignoramus's fishing. Such as the people who callously bring no landing nets & beach any fish they catch taking numerous scales off the side of the fish, causing open wounds. This infuriates me - I've gone through so much bonjela, and I've lost count of the black eyes i have had for telling people off that are bigger than me!
Anyone reading this kill Eels when they catch em? Shame on you.

It always amuses me as to how much effort people take to hide their litter. I find litter stuffed down rabbit holes/dry stone walls and even under heavy rocks when it would be a lot easier to put it in their tackle box/net bag and take it home.
After all, they carried it to their peg and it has got to be lighter on the return journey. Me and my mate both find it discusting that people do this and they completely ignore the litter rules of the club or the controlling body. These rules should be made harder for people to get away from.In my club, if you are caught with litter in your peg, you can be fined even if the litter isn't yours and was already there when you arrived!! How anybody fishes with litter in their peg is completely beyond me, just seeing it makes me have to go and pick it up!!

same old story chaps.

The River cray in Bexley, Kent has plenty of litter. I and many of my volunteers pick it up every day, infact saturday just gone we filled a skip to over flowing from one stretch, you know what? Not a single bit of Angling related litter in over 200 metres of free public fishing.

yes we do find the odd corn tin, hook packet and ground bait bag, but this is rare. Yet still the locals say How much mess the anglers leave.

34 bin bags of sweet wrappers, bottles and beer cans.

1 motor bike
Plaster boards
20 metres of rubber tubing
5 bags of cement and sand
1 push chair
4 carpets and underlay
1 12ft wooden beem
15 car tyres
1 tricycle
1 burnt bed

in feb we had;
3 washing machines
2 wheel barrows
57 bags of litter
1 gas cylinder
3 trafic cones
1 plastic paddling pool
12ft of chain link fence
1 tumble dryer.
24 burnt out dumped cars.

And we still havnt finished that short stretch.
The EA wont do it, the council wont but will provide us with a skip.
the club who have the lease dont do anything at all.

Its local residents and Anglers who put in their spare time for no fee or goodies.
Just to see the difference is our reward.
To know we can do something about it and improve this Metropolitain site of special interest, Yes, Its a protected nature and conservation area. That tital isnt worth the paper its writen on, if the Authorities designate such conditions & dont do anything about it.

We Have. You can Too.

a good starting point, check out;
www.thames21.org.uk

look for Adopt-a-River.

find out whats going on in your reigon.
get involved.

If not then DIY.

If you want advice, contact me via e-mail
enabled, at top of post box.

Ashe Hurst
Cray Anglers Conservation Group. Co-Ordinator, Adopt-a-River

Check out "Pollution" on General.



I can walk over 1 1/2 miles and fill a bin bag every day with litter.

Alkies, Gangs of Wel ard youths, Family picnics/days out, the odd Arse hole trying to fish and two fingers to every thing else.
School kids, Joy riders, builders, domestic waste.
For Gods Sake, we have two Refuse tipps in our area, one directley up the road, 50 metres away. Free to residents and ?3.50 to others.

The estates are Dumps, and i live on one, built in 1989, endless battle.
4 new parks trashed within days of opening.
Council will not repair them now.
Brand new skate park and kiddies play area, lasted a week. graffitied and trashed, by the same local kidds that say they have nowt to do.

20 local Cub, Scout And Explorer scout groups.
New sports centre,
youth centres, Activities centre, weekend and holiday clubs, two water sports centres.
A rowing and sailing club on the thames and local lake.
and they are still not interested in using them.

Most days along the river, youths roam about, maybe not violent, but agresive manners and loutish acts of destruction on property and the wild life.

Its a sad reflerction of the scociety we now live in.

But then we do have those who care, the sad thing is the time and hard work can be spoilt within less time taken to correct a situation.

These Idiots will grow up?? Move away?? leaving the youngsters, that we must educate, make time for and listen to. Get them involved, word spreads on how much fun they had, or the rare wild animals that they were lucky to see.

Maybe a few years from now our problems may be less on the river side or around your lakes, if we put something into the environment and the local community, Dont shut them out.