Scottish Fly Fisher on MSN

Is it as difficult to find decent fly fishing in Scotland as it is
'fishing" (£££££) in the rest of the UK?

John

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find fishing in Europe which does
not cost a considerable amount of money, and usually also involves extensive
travel. This is mainly due to anglers being prepared to pay outrageous sums
for even mediocre fishing. It will certainly get worse. There is nothing
much to be done about it. Most "normal" anglers, are simply priced out of
the market.

Some places have become veritable angling tourist Meccas, and the fishing
often deteriorates rapidly as a result. People looking for peace and quiet
or a solitary experience on "good" waters are increasingly disappointed,
despite having paid a veritable fortune for the privilege. Many ( Most?),
can not even afford this doubtful experience.

Add to this the ongoing problems due to pollution and massive overfishing,
and the future is not very bright.

TL
MC

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:56:14 +0200, "Mike Connor"
wrote:

Is it as difficult to find decent fly fishing in Scotland as it is
'fishing" (£££££) in the rest of the UK?

John

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find fishing in Europe which does
not cost a considerable amount of money, and usually also involves extensive
travel. This is mainly due to anglers being prepared to pay outrageous sums
for even mediocre fishing. It will certainly get worse. There is nothing
much to be done about it. Most "normal" anglers, are simply priced out of
the market.

Some places have become veritable angling tourist Meccas, and the fishing
often deteriorates rapidly as a result. People looking for peace and quiet
or a solitary experience on "good" waters are increasingly disappointed,
despite having paid a veritable fortune for the privilege. Many ( Most?),
can not even afford this doubtful experience.

Add to this the ongoing problems due to pollution and massive overfishing,
and the future is not very bright.

I couldn't agree more. As individuals, we fishermen can make a
contribution by practicing catch and release at least. However, the
environment is so out of kilter, more needs to be done at a national
and international level.

Look at the cormorant problem in the UK. Due to over-fishing at sea,
these birds are heading inland, and the effect on wild fish stocks has
been devastating in some areas.

Over use of pesticides not only screw up the insect life on which the
fish feed, but they stay in the food chain and accumulate to toxic
levels in predator species.

Unless something is done soon, all we will have to look forward to is
days of stockie bashing in muddy puddles.

John
http://groups.msn.com/scottishflyfisher
Responsible anglers catch and release.
Lose the barbs or lose the fish!

"Scottish Fly Fisher" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
SNIP
I couldn't agree more. As individuals, we fishermen can make a
contribution by practicing catch and release at least. However, the
environment is so out of kilter, more needs to be done at a national
and international level.

Look at the cormorant problem in the UK. Due to over-fishing at sea,
these birds are heading inland, and the effect on wild fish stocks has
been devastating in some areas.

Over use of pesticides not only screw up the insect life on which the
fish feed, but they stay in the food chain and accumulate to toxic
levels in predator species.

Unless something is done soon, all we will have to look forward to is
days of stockie bashing in muddy puddles.

John
http://groups.msn.com/scottishflyfisher
Responsible anglers catch and release.
Lose the barbs or lose the fish!

Practising catch and release is unlikely to solve any European problems at
all. Even if you took all the fish you ever caught in your life, including
undersized ones, you will never even get close to a fraction of the amount
in one trawl, or drift net. Alone the fish being taken from the sea to
produce pellets and similar material is in the millions of tonnes, and
increasing daily. This is completely destroying whole food chains, beyond
hope of recovery in a reasonable time scale.

The cormorant problem is not only a result of overfishing at sea, but
because the birds are protected. Populations have increased massively since
these birds were placed under protection.

Pesticides are a considerably lesser problem than fertiliser!

Many anglers nowadays, especially in the UK and various parts of Europe,
spend their lives looking forward to "days of stockie bashing in muddy
puddles". Fishing for fish which have been raised at an incredible loss
ratio, on wild protein obtained at the cost of massive and in the meantime
irreparable damage to the environment. This is quite apart from the
horrendous damage and wastage engendered by various other fish farming
projects world wide.

Anglers ( apart from the stockie bashers), are not responsible for these
things, and as ever, most are quite powerless to do anything about it.

While catch and release may be of some use in management of fisheries, ( or
more accurately, in management of anglers who use them!), it will do no good
at all in the face of the now huge problems in much of Europe, and indeed,
in many cases it merely serves to sop people´s consciences, as many cite it
as the moral high ground, when in fact, it is completely irrelevant to the
problems we are now facing.

TL
MC

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:11:59 +0200, "Mike Connor"
wrote:


"Scottish Fly Fisher" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
SNIP
I couldn't agree more. As individuals, we fishermen can make a
contribution by practicing catch and release at least. However, the
environment is so out of kilter, more needs to be done at a national
and international level.

Look at the cormorant problem in the UK. Due to over-fishing at sea,
these birds are heading inland, and the effect on wild fish stocks has
been devastating in some areas.

Over use of pesticides not only screw up the insect life on which the
fish feed, but they stay in the food chain and accumulate to toxic
levels in predator species.

Unless something is done soon, all we will have to look forward to is
days of stockie bashing in muddy puddles.

John
http://groups.msn.com/scottishflyfisher
Responsible anglers catch and release.
Lose the barbs or lose the fish!

Practising catch and release is unlikely to solve any European problems at
all. Even if you took all the fish you ever caught in your life, including
undersized ones, you will never even get close to a fraction of the amount
in one trawl, or drift net. Alone the fish being taken from the sea to
produce pellets and similar material is in the millions of tonnes, and
increasing daily. This is completely destroying whole food chains, beyond
hope of recovery in a reasonable time scale.

Sadly, you're right, and I probably only doing it to salve my
conscience. However, it is something that I have the power to do.

The cormorant problem is not only a result of overfishing at sea, but
because the birds are protected. Populations have increased massively since
these birds were placed under protection.

LoL. I had an interesting conversation with a twitcher on the Clyde
early in the season. The RSPB had set up a peregrine watch near a nest
near the Falls of Clyde. I was only out for a walk, so I wasn't kitted
up, and it wasn't obvious that I was a fisher. I was spoiling for a
debate, so I asked them if they had seen any cormorants in the area.
The guide proudly told me that he'd seen several in the area,
including several fledglings.

I know it was petty, but I was smarting from a few unproductive
outings on what used to be some of my favourite stretches of the
river, and he was a convenient target for my griping.

The sad thing is that conserving the cormorants is probably their
version of catch and release... trying to do something in the face of
overwhelming adversity.

If only the could adapt like the gulls, and live off land-fills and by
mugging the occasional drunk for their kebab. :-)

Pesticides are a considerably lesser problem than fertiliser!

One I forgot to mention.

Many anglers nowadays, especially in the UK and various parts of Europe,
spend their lives looking forward to "days of stockie bashing in muddy
puddles". Fishing for fish which have been raised at an incredible loss
ratio, on wild protein obtained at the cost of massive and in the meantime
irreparable damage to the environment. This is quite apart from the
horrendous damage and wastage engendered by various other fish farming
projects world wide.

I could be wrong, but isn't the fish food made from the wastage... the
stuff that people don't eat? I could be wrong here, but does the
production of fish food pellets make a significant difference to the
amount of fish that are hoovered up from the sea?

Anglers ( apart from the stockie bashers), are not responsible for these
things, and as ever, most are quite powerless to do anything about it.

But it feels better if you try to do something, no matter how
insignificant. Most of us are stockie bashers, BTW. There are few
truly wild waters left in Britain, (I can't speak for the continent.)
It's hard to find any water that doesn't have its population
supplemented by triploid stockies. If these fish are wasteful,
ecologically speaking, we are fooling ourselves that they help to prop
up the resident populations of trout.

While catch and release may be of some use in management of fisheries, ( or
more accurately, in management of anglers who use them!), it will do no good
at all in the face of the now huge problems in much of Europe, and indeed,
in many cases it merely serves to sop people´s consciences, as many cite it
as the moral high ground, when in fact, it is completely irrelevant to the
problems we are now facing.

You're probably right, but it can't hurt, can it? If I don't kill my
fish and treat them with care when returning them, that still makes a
difference, albeit a small one. Every journey starts with a single
step...

John
http://groups.msn.com/scottishflyfisher
Responsible anglers catch and release.
Lose the barbs or lose the fish!

"Scottish Fly Fisher" wrote in message
...
...The cormorant problem is not only a result of overfishing at sea, but
because the birds are protected. Populations have increased massively
since
these birds were placed under protection.....

...If only the could adapt like the gulls, and live off land-fills and by
mugging the occasional drunk for their kebab. :-)

I don't recall ever seeing a cormorant when I was a boy growing up on the
shore of Lake Michigan. As far as I knew, even many years later when I
developed an interest in birds, they were strictly marine birds. As a
matter of fact, I still don't know whether they are considered native on the
Great Lakes. I first started noticing them (much to my excited pleasure)
maybe 15 or 20 years ago. These days it's nearly impossible to spend any
time on the beaches or the lake without seeing many of them, and their
numbers seem to be increasing steadily.

Presumably, they are also protected here as they are not considered to be
either game birds or pests......not yet, anyway.....and protected is the
default status for anything not covered by the other two categories. Not
that protected status makes much difference, I suppose. Nobody seems to be
much interested in shooting them; the days of widespread shooting of
anything that moves are pretty much gone around here.

Interesting that they are burgeoning both here and there. One wonders
whether the same sorts of dynamics are at work.....and what they might be.

Also interesting.....and disturbing.....is the fact that the populations of
gulls (primarily herring gulls and ring-billed gulls) have also been
increasing at an alarming rate, much to the detriment of many of the shore
birds from what I've heard. I haven't researched the matter, so I don't
really know what's behind this rise either, but I do know that it has a lot
of wildlife scientists and managers very concerned.

And then, just about a month ago, I saw my first ever Lake Michigan
pelican....a brown pelican. Not sure that the existence of a pelican here
means anything, but watching all the changes that have taken place in the
past 50 years or so is very unsettling. The Great Lakes ecology is reeling
from one serious blow after another, with no end in sight.

Wolfgang

"Scottish Fly Fisher" schrieb im
Newsbeitrag ...
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:11:59 +0200, "Mike Connor"
wrote:

I could be wrong, but isn't the fish food made from the wastage... the
stuff that people don't eat? I could be wrong here, but does the
production of fish food pellets make a significant difference to the
amount of fish that are hoovered up from the sea?


No, unfortunately, practically all fish farming, including the breeding and
raising of triploid rainbows and other fish, especially salmonids, not to
mention very large numbers of crustaceans and similar, depends entirely on
large amounts of wild protein which is obtained from the high seas, and then
processed very wastefully.

Do a google search on the consumption of wild protein pellets, ( and there
are no viable substitutes) in the UK alone. A very large proportion of this
is used for fish farming, although there are a number of other uses,
including cattle feed, chicken feed ( which is why the boiled eggs stink of
fish!), and fertiliser.

If you check global figures, which are increasing very rapidly, then you
will be even more shocked. Fish farming is increasing rapidly, but the wild
protein consumption is alsready far beyond the capacity of the oceans to
replace it, quite apart from the resultant food chain destruction, and all
the other severe collateral damage.

TL
MC

"Wolfgang" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
SNIP
Interesting that they are burgeoning both here and there. One wonders
whether the same sorts of dynamics are at work.....and what they might be.

SNIP

Ongoing and well founded research suggests that the dynamics are much the
same. The single main cause being the massive overfishing of food chain
items. Large areas of ocean around the Americas are now almost devoid of
life, forcing birds and other predators to seek alternatives. These
alternatives are of course also slowly, or even rapidly eroded, as the birds
then increase to beyond what the resource can bear, and then go into sharp
decline, but only after much damage and destruction has taken place.

TL
MC

"Mike Connor" wrote in message
...

"Wolfgang" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
SNIP
Interesting that they are burgeoning both here and there. One wonders
whether the same sorts of dynamics are at work.....and what they might
be.

SNIP

Ongoing and well founded research suggests that the dynamics are much the
same. The single main cause being the massive overfishing of food chain
items. Large areas of ocean around the Americas are now almost devoid of
life, forcing birds and other predators to seek alternatives. These
alternatives are of course also slowly, or even rapidly eroded, as the
birds then increase to beyond what the resource can bear, and then go into
sharp decline, but only after much damage and destruction has taken place.

I can't deny that overharvesting the cormorants' food supply in marine
habitats has contributed to their dispersal in search of greener pastures,
but the Great Lakes even at their most fecund are virtually sterile as their
compared to oceanic environments. There must be something more going on, I
think.

Wolfgang

"Wolfgang" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
SNIP
I can't deny that overharvesting the cormorants' food supply in marine
habitats has contributed to their dispersal in search of greener pastures,
but the Great Lakes even at their most fecund are virtually sterile as
their compared to oceanic environments. There must be something more
going on, I think.

Wolfgang


Oh doubtless there are other mechanisms at work as well, there always are,
often ( indeed, usually!) extremely complex to boot. I have no really
specific information on the Great Lakes as such, although they are also
mentioned in some research I have read. Large numbers of cormorants have now
apparently developed quite specific behaviour for exploiting inland areas.
This is especially evident in parts of Europe, where the birds have indeed
virtually denuded even large areas of fish. Where there were once no birds
at all, there are now quite large numbers, and very active nesting colonies.

Some gulls have also been observed to have completely modified their feeding
areas and behaviour, now coming inland and feeding almost exclusively on
rubbish tips and in similar areas. Huge flocks of these birds can now be
observed in such places.

There is quite a lot of literature on the matter, and a google search will
also turn up a great deal. Perhaps there is indeed something a little more
specific on the Great Lakes?

TL
MC

May be of interest;

http://www.fws.gov/migratorybirds/is...tlakes_q&a.htm

It should be remembered of course that there are quite a number of cormorant
species, and not all will necessarily behave in the same manner, or for the
same reasons.

TL
MC