Commerical fishing: dereliction of duty

These fish could have been returned mostly alive with absolute minimum effort but that wouldn't have suited the agenda which commercial fishermen have.

Keith Arthur
Quotes of the week

There's little doubt that this late autumn into winter period has seen some of the best cod fishing for a few years, especially from the Western Approaches right round into the North Sea.

These are not huge fish but predominantly - and predictably - mostly survivors from last year's run of 'year one' fish. The general size seems to be from 2 - 4lb. Not every angler is catching them and certainly not every trip but it is some encouragement and could be a sign that the cutbacks on commercial fishing are succeeding - or maybe not.

A recent report in most of the news media concerned a trip out from Hartlepool for Fisheries minister Jonathan Shaw on a trawler which was supposed to be fishing for prawns.

The crux of the story was that there were many hundreds of cod caught which, because quotas had already been filed, had to be thrown back dead. You may have heard Steve Souter ranting about this on a recent Tight Lines.

The bycatch of this vessel, meaning the amount of unwanted species compared to wanted species, was a mind-blowing 85-90%. This compares with an average of 5-10%. Then there was the fact that all these fish were 'boxed' before returning them to the sea. That meant every single fish returned was stone dead. Most of these fish were cod, with a few turbot. Many of the cod were very small, year one fish which are undersized anyway.

I have, like Steve Souter, no reason whatsoever to doubt that this event was 'set up' for the benefit of the minister and television cameras.

Firstly, the bycatch rate. Any trawler captain worth his salt would be able to tell cod from prawns on his fish-finder: I certainly can and if I can, as an amateur sea angler, so should he. Secondly these fish could have been returned mostly alive with absolute minimum effort but that wouldn't have suited the agenda which commercial fishermen have.

I understand completely that they have to make a living, as do we all, and it is not an easy life with the quotas and days-at-sea limitations imposed on them. However it must be remembered that this is a self-inflicted wound; if they hadn't put pressure on to maintain unsustainable levels of exploitation, against ALL scientific advice, then the situation may not have got to where it has.

Now a few cod are appearing pressure is being exerted to increase quotas and catch this year's run of fish before they have a chance to breed.

Cod are pretty fertile fish, each MATURE female sheds a huge number of eggs, certainly hundreds of thousands, into millions. The bigger the fish, the more the eggs. These fish are first-year spawners and IF they are allowed to spawn, three years hence we should see even more cod. If they aren't, well, work it out for yourself.

Cod of this size, 2-4lb, are not ideal for market as they produce just two fillets for a load of waste and fetch poor returns but they are cod and compared to other fish, such as pollack and coalfish, represent more cash at the dock. Even small cod are worth up to 5 times the price of prime pollack.

Compared to what anglers are prepared to spend on a day's Pollack fishing, and £300+ is by no means top whack for six anglers on a good boat, 60p a kilo on the fish market is simply poor economy.

Of course this latest piece of propaganda comes hot on the heels of Mr Shaw refusing to implement the increased minimum landing size (MLS) for bass, an increase proposed, nay PROMISED by his predecessor Mr Bradshaw.

Mr Shaw based that dereliction of duty on evidence provided by science, apparently, which suggested that bass stocks were at a sufficiently high level to render the increase unnecessary. It must be different scientists that have been insisting for the past however-many- years that ALL fishing effort for cod in the southern North Sea should be abandoned because Mr Shaw, just the last in a line of successive ministers, have ignored that advice.

Of course I, nor anyone, wants to see an industry shut down but sometimes they come to the end of their natural life, as coal mining and steel making did in the 90s. Maybe commercial fishing for cod has reached that situation.

Keith Arthur answers your questions....

Email Keith Arthur here

Keith, can you tell me the make & model of the rods & reel that Will Raison showed on last weeks programme. Thanks, Ken Williams.

KEITH SAYS: Hi Ken, Will is a consultant for Daiwa Sports, aiding in the design of rods and other tackle items for them. The rod he brought in was the Spectron M2 10/11 medium feeder rod. The code is SM21011Q. It's a pretty expensive piece of kit but brilliantly designed and constructed. The reel was the TD3012D, in the Team Daiwa range. Both of these items are ideally suited to modern commercial fishery match fishing where swims can be quite tight, making a shorter rod easier to use. The reel has a very responsive front-drag system so backwinding, if you choose, becomes a thing of the past; the drag is smooth enough to set once and forget! At least I do, even though I use a different reel for my commercial fishing.

If you are buying on a budget there are similar rods and reels available at lower prices but of course not necessarily the same quality. I use a Drennan Puddle Chucker Combo for my commercial bomb fishing: it's 10ft or 11'9" and sells for under £80 and my Mitchell 300X reel, which is now discontinued, was about £40. Of course, if you want the best available, then the Daiwas have it.

Keith, I enjoyed last week's column - I love this time of year as I am a keen pike fisherman. Just out of curiosity, where is your favourite type, place and season to fish? George, Maidstone.

KEITH SAYS: Hello George, VERY favourite: well I guess hunting blackfin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico comes pretty high on the list! Tarpon in Key West Harbour is right up there too. However, closer to home, I really enjoy trotting the River Colne around Uxbridge for chub in winter; the tidal Thames in autumn for barbel and carp using 'specialist' methods or a match at Gold Valley, especially if I can have the old 'low 50's' numbers on Middle Lake. You can add to that fishing for chub, bream and maybe carp on the Grand Union Canal around Watford on the long pole, loch-style drifting at Rutland, fishing buzzers for trout, fly fishing small streams for grayling, lure fishing for predators. I have had great fun catching pollack on fly from off the rocks on the Isle of Man and some wonderful bass fishing from Dover this year with Mike and Tara Williams on Firefox. The pollack fishing with Dave Gibson out of Weymouth on Lady Godiva was awesome too. I hope to add another favourite soon: I will be making a return to the LAA's Britford Fishery on the Hampshire Avon to try and winkle out a big roach. I've not fished there since the 1960s. One last special choice would be to wind the clock back 30 years and fish the Trent below Nottingham for roach on the stick float. I like to think my match angling skills were at their peak and so was the fishing on that river at that time. I feel blessed to have lived through it.