Mr Crabtrovski and Petre
The Laws on EU citizens freedom to travel change this year, Britain is to expect somewhere in the region of 400k new arrivals, some of which will not fish “our style”, they may use long-lines, deadlines, harpoons, shotguns or even electricity. They may content themselves with only the fish but they could go for the ducks geese and swans also…Everything that goes in the pot is fair game to some.
Some of our new arrivals will fish for the pot, that is a nailed on certainty…Are our current Laws working and once a prosecution is made can our Judges be trusted to take the case seriously and give out a deterrent punishment ? I myself very much doubt that they will.
What happens when all the good fish are gone? Do we fish for “minnows”, will the weeklies publish pictures of all the specimen gudgeon coming out of the Tinsley Canal? or the outlandishly large 1 lb 4oz skimmer beam rumoured to have been taken on a fragment of boillie from Fen Drayton?
Others will use methods that we do not agree with, will the police “buy” the story that they were not after fish but instead after mussels Or will the police have enough about them to also realise that freshwater mussels are also a protected species in the UK?
And pretty much all of them will have scant regards for “club waters” and private stretches, private syndicate signs will mean nothing and guesting will be the norm we worry about the damage that otters do to the environment but that will be nothing in comparison to what these people will do, I have never seen an otter carrying a portable barbecue or a black bag full of perch and bream.
Makes me nervous….I don’t know about you. Some people say that I am a “racist” and I judge others out of hand, I only go with what I see and make the call as I see it. So what does happen when we get 400k more people almost overnight? Where do they live, what do they eat, what do they drink? Green fields turned over for housing, more imported crops, more water abstracted for domestic use draining rivers dry…I don’t like the vision of the future.
A good piece Lee. In the 50`s I grew up fishing with a Polish friend, he was UK born his parents fled from the Nazis in WW2, I spent much of the 50`s and early 60s fishing our local cut, the Rochdale, and we did a lot of piking, any largish pike we caught my little mate would take home for his father to eat. The region was very match orientated and pike fishing proper was some years ahead of us at this time so ignorance was bliss, we killed nearly every pike we caught, putting them back was unhead of in those days and we knew no different, fired on by the attitudes of our elders, what sad times these where. Many years later, circa 1977, I was the first Manchester Branch Sec for the then new PAC and the fight was still very much on to try to change lifelong beliefs and attitudes towards conservation. What a great shame to see outr efforts being challenged again, this time with a cultural threat from the east, The saying when in Rome comes to mind.