• You need to be a registered member of Barbel Fishing World to post on these forums. Some of the forums are hidden from non-members. Please refer to the instructions on the ‘Register’ page for details of how to join the new incarnation of BFW...

Dirty Rats?

You beat me to it Fred, was going to post that myself, some people think weils disease is a bit of a joke, it isn't !
 
Scary stuff.

I don't suppose there are any published figures about how many anglers are estimated to contract Weil's disease each year are there?
 
Rats

A freind of mine who worked as a crane driver in a scrapyard ,left his lunch in the cab came back eat his lunch ,went home 3 hours later went to bed feeling as though he had a cold coming on never managed the pub that night. Ended up at hospital where things got worse very quickly luckly for him it didnt kill him but has been wheelchair bound ever since which was27 years ago .
 
I've posted in length about this in the past. I actually contracted it in 1984 or five after doing a raft race on the river Teme, It was months before I was finally diagnosed and had I not been working in the NHS at the time could have been even longer. I Ended up being admitted to hospital and after a course of intravenous antibiotics and a long course of oral ones I made a full recovery. The fact that I was young and fit at the time obviously helped with my recovery but also masked the symptoms as it was put down to a virus, it was only the fact that I did a short course on water borne health hazards that I put two and two together and finally got a diagnosis.
 
51, that's much too young to go. Terrible. My first encounter with Weil's was as a teenager back in the late 1960s / early 1970s, in Wales, when, one night, the ne'er-do-well brother of the lady owner of a small, thriving, agricultural market-town hotel, a man who was always in the bar getting a skinful, drove the two miles back to his house in a nearby riverside village. Half way there his car went off the road, ran down a steep wooded bank and came to rest with its front wheels and bonnet in one of the lower river's best-known salmon pools. The man, drunk, dazed but unhurt, got out of the car, crawled to and along the riverbank for a short distance, rested for a few minutes, then climbed back up to the road, walked home and went to bed to sleep it off. A few days later he developed a cold, then flu ... ten days later he was dead - Weil's.
 
That really is scary, and the poor guy must have been fit as well, considering his hobby.

I can't help wondering how prevalent it is though, or why some catch it and some don't. In past years, fishing by a lake for days on end, we all used to wash at least our hands in the lake water....some even drank the stuff :eek:...and these were waters seething with rats.
You could watch them running all round you as the evening approached, and after dark they would invariably come into youir bivvy. Many of the guys would leave their cooking equipment from the evening meal laying on the ground until morning, so it doesn't require much imagination to work out what happened next...and yet in all the years I was carping, I never heard of anyone catching Weils.

Obviously you can't catch it until you come into contact with something contaminated by an infected animal, but it would seem there can't be THAT many of those around. But it would stil seem sensible to take precautions, because that appears to be a pretty nasty disease :(

Cheers, Dave.
 
I've been pretty paranoid about catching this for years. I always carry one of those alcohol based disinfectants and use before eating. Not complacent though. Thanks guys for the above links.
 
If you cover any open cuts and take care when eating or smoking and don't bite your nails you should be ok.
I individually wrap my sandwiches in cling film and try not to handle them with my bare hands, I also carry one of those alcohol rubs (even though club rules forbid alcohol on the bank). :)
 
And of course it is not just Rats, but Rodents in general (cue the "O" word!).
As obvious from the original post, this is not a joking matter and I sometimes wonder (as others have mentioned) how so few anglers are affected.
Friend of mine back in the 1990s worked as a drainage engineer for Manchester City Council (down in the sewer system)- they were regularly tested.
 
Mate of mine had it, he felt rough and collapsed at his daughters wedding, much head scratching from the quacks but when he mentioned he was an angler they acted and found the cause.

He had a re-lapse 6months later! Apparently this is quite common, they told him it might return and it did.

He is Ok now, but was very worried at the time (well he was after the event, he was so ill he didn't give a monkeys at the time).

He is a drainage plumber by trade, which was more probably the cause!!
 
Another name for this infection was 'Rat Catcher's Yellows' presumably because of the jaundice often seen with the disease. That's the name a farmer used when I used to work ferrets.
Cheers
Bob
 
carp angler Ken Townley was very ill with it there is a thread on carpforum about it and also a bailif on the cemex site had it as well.both were extremely ill and after reading the accounts i take as much precautions as i can now including covering cuts and washing hands with small tube of gel before eating whilst fishing
from what i can make out the areas in the edges of rivers and lakes are the most risky areas as this i where the water has less flow (to dilute the urine etc)and the rats are most active just happens to be the place where most anglers wash their hands or mix their groundbaits....so be carefull
 
I know it is being a bit negative, and I shouldn't really say it, BUT....

According to the report in Paul's link, 2 or 3 people a year die from this in the UK.

Compare that to the number of anglers, swimmers, paddlers, kids having fun, canoeists, water skiers, rowers...and a zillion other water sports, all at it each weekend....what are the odds against you catching this?

I know one death is one too many, and it would be crazy not to take precautions...but don't get TOO paranoid about it and let it spoil your enjoyment. You have a HELL of a lot more chance of being run over by a bus, but that doesn't stop you crossing the road....Just take reasonable precautions :)

Cheers, Dave.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top