Tony Miles -Article on Otters - Coarse fisherman

[Ian Turnbull]

Haven't seen the article so don't know what it says.
I haven't seen any otters on the waters I fish so to be fair haven't seen what they do. With this in mind I am neither for or against them. All i know is that nature has the ultimate say in this argument. If there are sufficient fish stocks to sustain the otters then so be it. Just because an otter takes a large barbel carp or anything shouldn't mean it should be culled, it is doing what come natural to it like it or not. Usually nature selects what survives regardless of man made efforts to create a so called balance. Does a barbel have more of a right to be in a river than a chub a roach or even an otter? Predation usually strikes a balance where a healthy stock of everything exists, the weaker, ill or older get removed from the equation as part of this.
If otters were to wipe out a river of all its fish then they will be naturally selected to fail and die out. The fish will return though over a period of time and the cycle will be repeated.

 

[Declan Doherty]

If otters were to wipe out a river of all its fish then they will be naturally selected to fail and die out. The fish will return though over a period of time and the cycle will be repeated

The cycle being - introduce predator without any sustainability survey, top-up fish population, replace (roadkill/starvation prone) predator without any sustainability survey, top-up fish population... etc. etc. ad infinitum..

Why not just shoot the bloody things where they're causing a problem?

 

[Ian Turnbull]

True Declan
That's if the otter is artificially reintroduced again. I am under the impression (rightly or wrongly) the reintroduction schemes were finished years since so any otters appearing on new stretches of water have got there by their own means. If they were still introducing them then surely there would be loads of them running about on the Trent.
The point still remains though, no food no otters.

Regarding culls of otters in the past - whether it be by hunting with dogs or shooting does anyone think they were done to benefit us coarse fishermen? No, of course not, it was for the wealthy salmon brigade. Incidently that also included the mass culls of coarse fish because they ate the eggs, nothing to do with overfishing at sea, but thats another matter.