how much more pressure before we fight back

[baitmaster]

i apolige now for this political post but i think it does merit a mention to us all and i think we need to be more aware and not stick are heads in the sand .
as you are all aware i fish alot on the fen drains and i am out very regular and see alot what goes on and i have recently been seeing alot of foriegn anglers fishing .
now it would be nieve of me to think that all are members or are catching for the love of the sport ,
so recently i have taken up approaching them the first time i approach one i produced my club licence and ask to see his and suddenly the guy could not understand english i repeated myself and he strugged his shoulders and ignore me so not wanting to be confrontational at this point i would just keep an eye on him but luckerly he did not catch .
again i approached another foreign angler on another occassion and he said he was not aware that he need a club licence but at least he had a EA licence which lead me to believe he was fishing for sport i explained he needed a club ticket and he promised he would get one and i left it at that ,
however as we were not that far apart we could see what each other caught if anything on this occasion i had a early pike on one of my zedding session and unhooked it on looking up the other angler was in my swim and asked if he could have the pike on which i answered him with a firm no suddenly i was being subjected to a load of verbal from him which i did not take kindly to but promptly put the pike back which seemed to insence him even more and i could here him and see his gentures as he walked b away from me and left .but what if he had not walked away because i would have not backed down and it could have ended in tears .
now this seems to me to be getting more and more frequent and alot more open and i believe before long thier is going to be an incident involving one of these and a angler and some one will fight back with a unfortunate outcome i know its not ok and not every angler is confrontational and some will turn a blind eye to what going on , which might in some cases be the right thing to do but sure you still could observe was going on and gathering information on what they are doing , the question is this who do you tell do you tell your local EA officer who will look into it in about two weeks ,or do you inform the police who will probably say well the bye laws allow them to take a couple of fish .or do we seek other way of trying to battle this as it getting more and more frequent i personaly think clubs have a duty to its members to police there waters but this also seems to not happen as frequent as we like and some clubs have vast waters to cover and this also seem to not be possible but member can at least now ask clubs to give them hotline numbers so member can inform the club of any thing suspiciuos going on in tern this might make commitees think of club policies and changes my be able to be made to protect there waters.
as all member are the clubs eyes and the nif all club would get together in some form to just see how big this problem is becoming before its to late .
sorry to get so deep but unfortunatly the broads and fens are two area that seem to get alot attention from these people and both are passionate to me but it is going on where you live to .

tightlines
kevin

[gullyworm]

Are these people been brought into the area to use as cheep labour on the land?

[baitmaster]

i am assuming they are but i do not know but the word immigrant get banded about when these issues arise

tightlines

kev

[aku94]

I think this guy probably was an honest bloke, who was unaware of how things are done. Since you gave him a "briefing"/ warning this time- let him go. If he does it again, contact the authorities. By being at least semi-honest with you, and obtaining a license, it says he was at least trying to do the right thing.
However, he got his last strike.

[Portland Pirate]

I think that this is going to be a massive on going problem.
There is absoultly no point in contacting the EA. There is no law that says that fish can not be killed. In fact on some waters I fish all Pike must be killed if caught. It might be worth lobbying the EA to change the laws but I think that would take a long time to achieve if possible at all. Most local clubs and fisheries do not even have rules against killing any fish that have been caught. This is probably due to there not having been this kind of problem in the past. What is needed in this case is a change to the rules of the club or the fishery. If the rules were brocken then the police could be called and the culprit charged with theft.
However when it came to court the defendant could just claim that he needed to fish to feed his family.
Let us hope that something can be done before all the fish have been taken and the only place we can fish is on comercial fisheries.

[surface#iain#]

If anything and this is to baitmaster and anyone who shares the same views you wrote"involving one of these and a angler " who are one of these you act as if these people are dirt??? i completely agree with you about looking after the fish ect and i know from your previous post that you are good for that but AKU94 made a good piont that there just need to be told and maybe it was a genueine mistake or a lake of knowledge You also said you cant call them imagrents anymore Why not not meaning to start or cause trouble but im Half Jamaican so dose that make me one of those people i cant be an imagrent because i was bourn in this country.......

[baitmaster]

surface ian i do not think they are dirt and i said ( one of these people )cause i did not know what nationality they were OK you are reading to much into my post , as for your self being born in this country it make you british OK and like wise if i move to any other country in the world i would be an immigrant its a generalisisation not a racist remark to another person but you have missed the point of the post .so in future i will not say anything and stick my head in the sand then every thing will be ok .

tightlines
baitmaster

[Ben]

every1 has a right to air thier opinion Kevin and i would have done exactly the same, nice1 for sticking to your ground and telling him where to go

[Greenheart]

Problem is a lot of these people come from countrys where fishing for the pot is considered the norm & sport fishing is considered a crazy waste of time. The s--t is really going to hit the fan when one of these people go to a syndicate water & try to walk away with a 30lb carp that they have just hit on the head. It,s difficult to know the answer. Education or legislation? I went out on a charter boat from weymouth last year & the skipper told me he was having problems with foreigners on his boat wanting to kill everything they catch regardless of size or species. Also be aware of some of the european ideas. The Green party in Germany lobbied for fishing to be banned because keeping fish in keepnets was cruel. Result, the German goverment banned the use of keepnets in matches & stated that all fish should be killed before weighing as returning them to the water may spread disease.

[baitmaster]

good points there green heart i am aware that in a lot of countries they do catch for the pot and not for sport ,so really legislation would not do any good in the present climate but education would certainly be the way forward to start with . but bylaws state you can kill and take fish away this is an area which will need to be clarified to help the whole process easier to understand

tightlines

kev