Bait digging under threat in Dublin Bay

Just seen this in our local rag and my heart sunk there is a lot of bullsh**e in this article and it's well hyped up. I have been digging bait here for over forty years and my father before me and his father before him what is it coming to, it's now fashionable to have a natural resource what about 40yrs ago when no one gave a sh*t and filled our estuary's with raw sewage were they giving out then not a chance. They have cheek it's my inheritance and they have no right to stop me.

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you will proberly find that one of her relations wants to start a bait farm there this is what your goverment officals do take away something that was yours as a right and give it back to you only they charge you for the privilage. fauna me b-----ks
dublin port are still trying to fill in clontarf with concrete and all we do is help these birds by turning the sand over makes it easier for them to find food and us king rag. what i dont agree with is allowing commercial diggers from over seas dig with machinary. there is a byelaw govering beaches about bringing digging equipment on to the beach and removing sand gravel ect but there has been commercial diggers useing dublin bay for years all of the shops at one time employed diggers and the fauna or what ever has not been disturbed by any of them. i say the new angle will be a digging permit another way of charging you for something that was free

Hmmmm. One first reading (and very quickly too) it seems to me that the councillor may have a point, if indeed commercial operators are going in with machinery to pillage the area. Does anyone know if that's true? Have any local anglers seen anyone doing this?

Using garden machinery to dig bait is, to my mind, not sustainable. Get out with a fork, put your back and a bit of sweat into it should be the only way to collect bait. That way, you're not inclined to over harvest an area, you'll just take what you need.

Anyhoo, some of the points in that article need rebutting. Who wants to write in?

Thats a load of c**k

40 worms per person they have some hope of putting that into practice

Amazing how they couldn't give a sh1t about the damage done to the seabed by the commercial's

Well if the storys about people digging commercially with machines, thats a fair point, it is close to a nature reserve, we've seen people uploading pics on this site with 600 -900 razor dug from one site, thats not good for an area, if some one was to dig 1000 worm once a week it couldnt be good, I wouldnt worry about it too much anyways

seems to me the newspaper has just openly told everyone where to go to dig bait!!
i hope they don't do an article on bass fishing!!

they'll get on their high horse over diggin there by hand, but et don;t give a damn when the seabed is completely torn up out by velvet strand in portmarnock, leaving a 3 km tidal line of dead starfish and crabs...... I guess some people will hop on whatever is the hot topic of the moment

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seems to me the newspaper has just openly told everyone where to go to dig bait!!
i hope they don't do an article on Bass fishing!!

ha true.
seriously though. 40 worms??? how did they come up witht that number. what was the formula for that. how much research went into it.
Obviously nobody wants to see lads come over on the ferry with machinery to dig. (has anybody seen this? whats meant by machinery?) Surely as a community of sea anglers, lots of us are actually using these (maybe the 2 best known digging spots in the country). Would there not have been a report on here giving out about such a thing. Surely sombody on here would have seen it. If you have please let us know. I for one would be disgusted to see mechanical machinery used for bait digging. Obviously bait collection has an impact on the environment. Please give this question some thought:

If you dig your own bait, do you not take the same as you would if buying from a commercial collector. There aren't that many areas to dig worms on the east coast so a lot come from the same well known areas. e.g. i fish from louth to raven point regularly and all lug i use comes from either sutton or wexford harbour and all rag is from bull island. i ask when i'm buying.

a plus point on this: the northside people is a free newspaper. make sure you pick up a few copies for wrapping your freshly dug lug or rag.

Sorry, forgot to say that i will be sending letters asking for info on where they got the info on this. I would urge you all to do likewise. Its a stab at our sport and we should respond strongly as individuals in defence of our sport.

More chatter here, does anyone have an account on that board to put our side across?

anyone got an email address for this paper?

The piece about the the machinery is a load of sh*t they have added this in to shock people if there was a machine we would know about it believe me, and the piece about the van loads of lads coming across on the ferry in nonsense it would not be economical viable.
The bait beds have been the main source of rag to the Dublin angling community since time in memorial and the more i dig it the better it gets , Yes it's used by commercial diggers and fair play they have raised their family's on it (not an easy job) They would loose their jobs, then no bait diggers= no bait in shops = less customers=shops import bait, there's no end to the permeations.
Can we with a strong voice with this site stand by and let this happen i think not, and remember if this is passed it's only the start a precedent will have been set and is likely to happen country wide.

I'm changing the title to something that reflects what is being discussed. Keep discussion logical and to the point.

anyone got an email address for this paper?

http://www.dublinpeople.com/content/view/2385/95/
Here's there web site.

http://www.dublincity.ie/YourCouncil/Co ... Muiri.aspx
And here's the man pushing it.

Here another article this time from the Sunday times.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6832506.ece

How actually do the Birds dig up the worms because I see them eating small shrimp and lice from the seaweed and small pools where I dig and I've only seen them get a small rag or lug in the holes I've dug.

cheers paul,i for one, will be fowarding an email to both the paper and the councillor highlighting the valid points made.

i cant see what all the fuss is about? ive never seen any machinery used to dig bait, and as paul said why would anglers from the uk spend copius amounts of petrol money and ferry tickets to dig bait here when they have good bait bed themselves? the vast majority of digging is done in a responcible and conservitive way. i've never gone out digging to find the place devoid of worms unless the weather had something to say about, when the worms burrow deeper. the rag is left alone in the winter and the lug in the summer, to replenish their stocks. digging has been going on for decades, why has it only become a major problem now? 20/40 worms per angler,

To give some background to this article the Northside People is as mentioned a free sheet and would not have journalistic standards like the national newspapers. Not that, that says much! Also The Councillor mentioned is from my constituency. Following a conversation with him on my door step during the local elections recently, I can say that in my opinion that he is as useful as any other politician. My wife and I felt after talking to him over local issues that he was pretty clueless. Mod's this is my own opinion and does not reflect that of this club or web site. I am constitutionally allowed to make such an opinion known.

This article is nothing short of a local paper running a story with no substance. I have never seen any body using machinery in Clontarf digging for bait. I dig there once a week myself and would walk down there at least twice a week with my daughter or wife. I'm pretty confident that there is little or no evidence to back up the allegation that anglers or diggers from the UK are over here digging worms for a commercial basis. I'm sure this addition to the story is for shock value to build a story out of nothing.

While there might be some concern with people digging commercially and effects on the environment I don't think that any angler would adhere to a bucket limit of 40 worms. However they would also only ever take what they need for a fishing session or two. It's back breaking work and not worth digging a hundred more worms if you don't need them. The argument for commercial diggers could also be made about supply and demand. Commercial diggers have a vested interest in keeping the worm beds productive and would not like to see them decimated as they would suffer loss of income.

I was in the News trade for nearly ten years and had a good relationship with the said title for all of that time. While under some pressure from trade groups not to carry a free sheet. I can whole heartedly say after reading this article I would have raised my annoyance with them over it and more then likely ended that relationship.