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Anybody stopped fishing?

Decided to try for a perch on the Wye today.
After bait fish, of which there were an amazing number of chublets and dace, finally managed to get some bleak. And then the inevitable happened.

After a furtive glance behind to make sure no one was watching I played the barbel hard to the net.

A quick lift and then contemplating whether to take a trophy shot???

Anyway. Held it up to admire it. Stunning beautiful fish without a scale out of place and I then dropped it into the nearside slack where it immediately powered off.

Great fun.
 
All this 'if you care so much about barbel why fish for them' is just a cop out,to ease the conscience of the people fishing for them in these ridiculous conditions. Barbel aren't an endless commodity,and they're especially fragile compared to most species. They're also,along with carp,very easy to catch at this time of year. If it's so easy where's the fascination?
 
What I still haven’t seen/heard and I’ve even gone looking for myself, is at what level of dissolved oxygen content do they become difficult to recover. That information seems to be absent.
Anybody able to answer this question? If we are going to specifically say Barbel shouldn’t be fished for and other fish are ok, where’s the evidence. Whilst it’s not considered best practice they do survive and grow in over populated commercial puddles.
 
Terry Simner said:
That argument is a blatant 'red herring' IMO Dan. Most of us care about most creatures, but most of us still eat meat..but eating meat doesn't mean we 'don't care' does it. I'm sure most of us care about ALL fish but we, on BFW, tend to care mostly about barbel...and we care about them because we enjoy catching them . What this 'dilema/concern' is all about is not a hook point in a barbel's lip, or the possibility of psychological distress, but us inadvertently KILLING barbel.
There is a world of difference between, a 2mm hole in a barbel's lip... and a barbel going belly-up down the river to its death. But, that's just my opinion..you may disagree.
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Who said I was arguing and who said I was fishing? I don't disagree with your opinion, or anyone else's really. I forge my own and tend to keep them to myself. I'd never dare to preach to another angler when or how they should fish. I'll throw thoughts out there all day long though and enjoy hearing what others say, regardless of if I agree.
 
Dan Whitelock said:
Who said I was arguing and who said I was fishing? I don't disagree with your opinion, or anyone else's really. I forge my own and tend to keep them to myself. I'd never dare to preach to another angler when or how they should fish. I'll throw thoughts out there all day long though and enjoy hearing what others say, regardless of if I agree.
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My post was in reply to yours that stated : "If anglers really cared that much then they wouldn't stick hooks in them and drag them out of the water, regardless of the weather".
If that's not an 'argument' then it's at least a 'posit'.
 
Stephen Crowhurst said:
What I still haven’t seen/heard and I’ve even gone looking for myself, is at what level of dissolved oxygen content do they become difficult to recover. That information seems to be absent.
Anybody able to answer this question? If we are going to specifically say Barbel shouldn’t be fished for and other fish are ok, where’s the evidence. Whilst it’s not considered best practice they do survive and grow in over populated commercial puddles.
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I've read somewhere in the past ( don't quote me on this) that barbel are almost exclusively made up of red as opposed to white muscle tissue. I'm familiar with our own make up of 'fast twitch' and 'slow twitch' muscle fibers. If we translate that to the fishy world,that would make the barbel an outright sprinter,which is why they fight so hard,and their blood becomes almost 'toxic' with all the lactic acid build up. So after this major exertion from the barbel, it's oxygen requirement is massive,only at the moment there is none.
 
Cheers mark, be interesting to get some proper information though wouldn’t it. Hard to make informed decisions without informed information.
 
Hot off the press! This has just been issued by Ross AC
Dear members,
Due to the continuing low river level and high water temperature affecting the river Wye, the Ross-on-Wye AC club committee has decided to cease all angling on our club's waters from Monday 23rd July until further notice. This includes the day-ticket fishing on the Town Water.
This decision has not been taken lightly and has been made after consultation with the Environment Agency. The Hereford & District AA have also imposed a similar cessation of all angling on their waters as have a number of other fisheries.
The club committee regrets any inconvenience to members, but we unanimously concluded that closing our waters for the time being is the only reasonable course of action to help minimise the stress of current river conditions on the fish and to help prevent unnecessary mortalities. We trust you will all support this decision.
We will advise you immediately the decision is made to recommence fishing.
 
Stephen Crowhurst said:
What I still haven’t seen/heard and I’ve even gone looking for myself, is at what level of dissolved oxygen content do they become difficult to recover. That information seems to be absent.
Anybody able to answer this question? If we are going to specifically say Barbel shouldn’t be fished for and other fish are ok, where’s the evidence. Whilst it’s not considered best practice they do survive and grow in over populated commercial puddles.
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Its a gamble , with no real facts out there , other than common sense. I personally don't want to gamble and will quite happily wait for improved conditions. Then theres multiple catches of one Barbel , maybe that fish has been stressed by another Angler and went back ok , but the next time it could be a different story.. Not worth gambling in my opinion but if others wish to gamble , well that's their choice.
 
Craig Wood said:
Its a gamble , with no real facts out there , other than common sense. I personally don't want to gamble and will quite happily wait for improved conditions. Then theres multiple catches of one Barbel , maybe that fish has been stressed by another Angler and went back ok , but the next time it could be a different story.. Not worth gambling in my opinion but if others wish to gamble , well that's their choice.
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Completely agree.
 
Mark Mole said:
So he's now on his second alias?
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Mark

This is in reply to your post on Thursday, I couldn't put the whole post on but you quoted my post regarding the river level this year and insinuated that I was an alias. I can assure you that I am no alias and a lot of people on here will attest to that, check the Hampshire avon river record. Check your facts before making allegations.

Returned yesterday from 6 days fishing with a friend on the Wye. We caught 67 barbel, last year we caught 123. All the barbel fought well and were played quickly to the net, they were all unhooked in the water and EVERY one of them were returned safely and swam off strongly.

One day there was an angler float fishing upstream of me on the opposite bank, he caught a barbel which took him about 10 minutes to land. The fish was netted, lifted from water, unhooked and then dropped into his keepnet. That's the problem, NOT fishing for barbel but knowing how to treat them when fishing for them.
 
Phil Nixon said:
Mark

This is in reply to your post on Thursday, I couldn't put the whole post on but you quoted my post regarding the river level this year and insinuated that I was an alias. I can assure you that I am no alias and a lot of people on here will attest to that, check the Hampshire avon river record. Check your facts before making allegations.

Returned yesterday from 6 days fishing with a friend on the Wye. We caught 67 barbel, last year we caught 123. All the barbel fought well and were played quickly to the net, they were all unhooked in the water and EVERY one of them were returned safely and swam off strongly.

One day there was an angler float fishing upstream of me on the opposite bank, he caught a barbel which took him about 10 minutes to land. The fish was netted, lifted from water, unhooked and then dropped into his keepnet. That's the problem, NOT fishing for barbel but knowing how to treat them when fishing for them.
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Sorry Phil,slip of the finger. I didn't mean to quote your post....I was questioning a different BFW member,who has form!

I post off my smartphone,it's not the best,tapping away on a tiny screen.....no offense meant Phil.
 
Stephen Crowhurst said:
This hose pipe ban the press are getting all fruity about... is it not a direct consequence of the Heath fire outside Manchester?
Wessex water have 80% of the water they expect in thier resivoirs at present due to all that rain in the spring. I remember hoping it would clear for opening day so I could sight fish.
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Due to the remote and inaccessible locations of the moorland at Saddleworth and Winter Hill very little water (in relative terms) was applied to the moorland fires, in fact you could have probably applied 12” of water to the whole area effected by burning and the level of a large reservoir such as Haweswater wouldn’t have dropped by more than 12”.

The issue in the north-west is due to geology and incompetence. In the area controlled by United Utilities the loss of water through leakage is estimated at around 133 litres per household per day. I think that works out at around 25% loss in total. Due to the underlying geology (hard, impermeable rock) very little of the drinking water in the NW is from underground aquifers - it’s all predominantly stored in rain fed reservoirs which apart from suffering from the lack of rain, which are also suffer from significant evaporation in very warm summers.

Funny you should mention the fires though, with reference to Saddleworth it really doesn’t help when vast areas of blanket bog have been the subject of intensive drainage and subsequent controlled burning - all with the aim of producing a monoculture of dry heather in order to allow the rearing of red grouse at vastly unnaturally high levels and all propped up by generous taxpayer subsidies.
Blanket bogs when not buggered about with act as giant sponges slowly releasing water, ensuring a much more steady run-off of rainfall, particularly in summer. The fact is, you don’t get moorland fires on functioning blanket bog which esssentially consists of diet peat, topped water retaining sphagnum and cotton grasses.

I dread to think of the clean-up costs of dealing with the drinking water running of the areas effected by the fires, but one thing is for sure, it won’t be met by the grouse shooters, it will instead be the water rate payers. The impact on the aquatic ecology of the downstream surface waters will be pretty devasting as well. And many of these moors are owned by UU, you really couldn’t make this stuff up.
 
Mark Mole said:
Sorry Phil,slip of the finger. I didn't mean to quote your post....I was questioning a different BFW member,who has form!

I post off my smartphone,it's not the best,tapping away on a tiny screen.....no offense meant Phil.
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No problem Mark, was a bit confused, been called a lot of things over the years but not an "alias".
 
Joe Winstanley said:
Due to the remote and inaccessible locations of the moorland at Saddleworth and Winter Hill very little water (in relative terms) was applied to the moorland fires, in fact you could have probably applied 12” of water to the whole area effected by burning and the level of a large reservoir such as Haweswater wouldn’t have dropped by more than 12”.

The issue in the north-west is due to geology and incompetence. In the area controlled by United Utilities the loss of water through leakage is estimated at around 133 litres per household per day. I think that works out at around 25% loss in total. Due to the underlying geology (hard, impermeable rock) very little of the drinking water in the NW is from underground aquifers - it’s all predominantly stored in rain fed reservoirs which apart from suffering from the lack of rain, which are also suffer from significant evaporation in very warm summers.

Funny you should mention the fires though, with reference to Saddleworth it really doesn’t help when vast areas of blanket bog have been the subject of intensive drainage and subsequent controlled burning - all with the aim of producing a monoculture of dry heather in order to allow the rearing of red grouse at vastly unnaturally high levels and all propped up by generous taxpayer subsidies.
Blanket bogs when not buggered about with act as giant sponges slowly releasing water, ensuring a much more steady run-off of rainfall, particularly in summer. The fact is, you don’t get moorland fires on functioning blanket bog which esssentially consists of diet peat, topped water retaining sphagnum and cotton grasses.

I dread to think of the clean-up costs of dealing with the drinking water running of the areas effected by the fires, but one thing is for sure, it won’t be met by the grouse shooters, it will instead be the water rate payers. The impact on the aquatic ecology of the downstream surface waters will be pretty devasting as well. And many of these moors are owned by UU, you really couldn’t make this stuff up.
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Cheers for that informative post Joe. I thought there was more to it than what was made of it by the media, ie that it’s beginning of the apocalypse. :D
 
Stephen Crowhurst said:
Cheers for that informative post Joe. I thought there was more to it than what was made of it by the media, ie that it’s beginning of the apocalypse. :D
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Apparently the ban doesn’t start until 4th August, I think the rationale behind giving over 7 million people several weeks notice is to make they start using as much water as possible in the meantime! August 3rd should be renamed ‘National Car Washing Day’..

Ps - I meant *wet* peat, not *diet* peat whatever that is!
 
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