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NUBA, eh, John? Might offend some prospective members ("You're taking the wee-wee, mate") - [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuba_peoples"]Nuba peoples - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Nope. I know everything there is to know about disingenuous and loaded replies, after over of a decade of them from individuals and cliques on the Internet. It's boiling down to this: we Anglers can't act like mardy, foot-stamping, tantrum-throwing "I'll thwceam and thwceam until I am thick" Violet Elizabeth Botts in a Just William story anymore.
Agreed. So when someone actually gets off his botty to actively do something constructive to aid angling then why not give them credit for that rather than just try to shoot the whole thing down before it has even started.
he Otter Horror People are on the same path that the Foxy Folk were several years ago
Sorry again, Geoff, but ill-conceived partisan nonsense like that of the new Defence outfit will only bring Angling down - the Otter Horror People are on the same path that the Foxy Folk were several years ago: likely to end up muttering about and not obeying "unenforcable laws". Speed limit / tax / riot, anyone?
Sorry to be the odd man out here - I know we've been through it all before - but IMHO anyone who doesn't object to otters is a turkey voting for Christmas. I'm not a carp angler, I fish for everything, and that's what otters target... everything. There is a reason they were hunted down as vermin for so many years, the same reason as we hunted wolves!
On their own they can be likened to a single BB shot at angling: a small but significant problem, same as abstraction, cormorants, discharges, nitratres etc etc. But when we put all these threats together, it becomes a twin-barreled shotgun blast which could kill angling as we know it. We need to back these kind of initiatives the same as we would back anti-pollution lobbyists. Dismissing a group who are merely trying to save angling from predation threats is counter-productive. And likening them to neo-facist groups is not the way forward These are very probably guys just like you and I who love their fishing and just want to save it from what they (and I) see as a PC culture gone mad.
Geoff, you seem to raise the point that otters on their own are not the main problem (which I agree with), but simultaneously encourage the "kill them like the vermin they are" view that is as counter-productive to anglings needs as can be.
Sorry once more, Geoff, but people the world over now have become "fluffy" - they'll tolerate others of their own kind sticking one on others of their own kind (in the workplace, business, on the Internet etc...), but take strong exception to people bullying animals, particularly those who do it for purely selfish reasons or for fun. Ignore as many laws as we like, moan and whine about "PC gone mad" (citing "In my day, we were flogged for not raising our caps to the vicar..." or somesuch), but we can't change things. All this Otter Menace stuff is largely promoted by Little Englanders living in a rose-tinted imaginary past, not by experienced, aware Anglers (as opposed to mere results-driven Hookers) who really do know something about the ways of the wild.
And it's got nothing to do with protecting our declining fishing, everything to do righting the ills that have led to its decline. Otters are WAY down the list on that one.
All this Otter Menace stuff is largely promoted by Little Englanders living in a rose-tinted imaginary past, not by experienced, aware Anglers (as opposed to mere results-driven Hookers) who really do know something about the ways of the wild.
The pillocks that have released otters into many waterways have simply not checked for proper sustainability..... They have made sure the waterway is clean enough, great, but they have not checked that the food source is there.
How about some of the fisheries that have suffered losses suing the organisations that are releasing otters into their area? The fish in a pool are legal possessions of either the club controlling the water or the people otherwise running the fishery.
So I'm afraid that this discussion is a bit like Stan in Life of Brian announcing that he'd changed his name to Loretta because he wanted to have babies. What's the effin point? Stan didn't have a womb, and we haven't got an earthly of suggesting that fish which nobody but us ever sees are more important than Tarka. So do something more constructive with your time.