French trawlers hammering the shoaling bass today

My main concern at the moment with winter coming is whether or not the inshore Bass stocks are going to be hammered in the next few months as they always are[by the same people] or is this year going to be differant My own opinion is that it will be the same all story.
Decent topic by the way very informative on all fronts.

In relation to the Cork Harbour - Ballycotton area. We are in a far better place than where we were last year. There are numerous patrols being made in the area. I see on Facebook that most boats in the harbour area were visited yesterday. There are boats based in the harbour at present. A certain "bejeweled" boat was stopped/searched recently

Much of this comes from "in a room in a midleton premises a few years back"

It's not the French boats I'd be worried about either..........

jim,

im confused more now, you are talking to someboday called mike about herrings

so you guys are saying the seafish
Figure 2: Map of sea Bass stock areas (colour keyed to table)
is inaccurate?

John,
Of course there is a fishery for bass. Of course pair trawlers actively hunt down and net bass at times of the year, these are the times when the fish aggregate for spawning or whatever reason the fish gather.

The myth being circulated by commercial interests is that the foreign trawlers are cleaning up just outside our territorial waters by catching bass on an ongoing basis. Therefore our boats should be allowed to fish there too.

The facts are:
There is no such fishing going on. Fishing like this goes on in the areas you mentioned - The English Channel (particularly off the Devon and Cornwall coast) etc. It was this that DaveB was highlighting on Facebook on Live AIS.
Other than that the fishery is an inshore one.

There are few if any trawlers capable of trawling at the speeds required to catch bass. This is why it tends to be a pair trawling exercise. You'll get a flavour here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... uaJUSP_sp8

I'm not adding anything new here I'm just backing up what others have already said i.e. there is evidence to suggest that foreign trawlers ARE NOT catching tonnes of Irish bass!!!

John D.

As an avid angler deeply concerned about Bass stocks and by extension, the future of Bass angling, I just wanted to put forward the context (still no excuse) in which people net Bass.....
I think we should spare a thought for the fishing crews who put to sea in the worst of the worst conditions, driven by quota restrictions and depleted stocks directly caused by the EU CFP and its open door policies. A common fisheries policy that sold out the fishermen to appease the very vocal and politically well-connected farming lobby courtesy of the common agricultural policy. Its a tough situation to be at sea in a freezing cold gale while farmers get cheques in the door to NOT farm. At least it will be something from our era for future generations to laugh at ! imagine the converse situation, where Large ( in farm size !) French and Spanish farmers come and farm at will in Ireland, while small Irish farmers have a tight qutoa to maintain. Fishermen however, get a cheque in the door to have their boats tied to the wall while we import fish....Craziness !

Its government who need to step up here to uphold and police the ban.........

As an avid angler deeply concerned about Bass stocks and by extension, the future of Bass angling, I just wanted to put forward the context (still no excuse) in which people net Bass.....
I think we should spare a thought for the fishing crews who put to sea in the worst of the worst conditions, driven by quota restrictions and depleted stocks directly caused by the EU CFP and its open door policies. A common fisheries policy that sold out the fishermen to appease the very vocal and politically well-connected farming lobby courtesy of the common agricultural policy. Its a tough situation to be at sea in a freezing cold gale while farmers get cheques in the door to NOT farm. At least it will be something from our era for future generations to laugh at ! imagine the converse situation, where Large ( in farm size !) French and Spanish farmers come and farm at will in Ireland, while small Irish farmers have a tight qutoa to maintain. Fishermen however, get a cheque in the door to have their boats tied to the wall while we import fish....Craziness !

Its government who need to step up here to uphold and police the ban.........

Not meaning to stir up any anger by the way, just trying to intoduce some objectivity to the debate.

As an avid angler deeply concerned about Bass stocks and by extension, the future of Bass angling, I just wanted to put forward the context (still no excuse) in which people net Bass.....
I think we should spare a thought for the fishing crews who put to sea in the worst of the worst conditions, driven by quota restrictions and depleted stocks directly caused by the EU CFP and its open door policies. A common fisheries policy that sold out the fishermen to appease the very vocal and politically well-connected farming lobby courtesy of the common agricultural policy. Its a tough situation to be at sea in a freezing cold gale while farmers get cheques in the door to NOT farm. At least it will be something from our era for future generations to laugh at ! imagine the converse situation, where Large ( in farm size !) French and Spanish farmers come and farm at will in Ireland, while small Irish farmers have a tight qutoa to maintain. Fishermen however, get a cheque in the door to have their boats tied to the wall while we import fish....Craziness !

Its government who need to step up here to uphold and police the ban.........

Oh ya, all us farmers are rolling in it...I actually stuffed the matress with the spare cash Simon Covney sent me, and sure lucky enough a freezing cold gale never blows on land here in the west coast either...and even if it did it wouldnt matter because I can look after all the cattle through my laptop in the heated office Not going to do much for preserving bass stocks though is it....

As an avid angler deeply concerned about Bass stocks and by extension, the future of Bass angling, I just wanted to put forward the context (still no excuse) in which people net Bass.....

Let’s make a distinction here:

Fisherman’s organisations, on behalf of their members, are trying to get the bass commercial fishery reopened because they perceive that there has been a recovery in bass stocks since commercial fishing nearly wiped bass out up to the 1980’s. They also reckon that there is discrimination at play because “foreign” boats can fish for bass in Irish/EU waters whereas Irish boats cannot. (I am not sure if Irish boats can fish in Other/EU waters and land bass in Other countries). Bass are not a fish regulated by the Common Fisheries Policy. There is a fear that because Irish boats have no catch history with bass then they will get no quota when bass is brought under the quota system (I hope I’m not over simplifying here.)

Then there are criminals who illegally net bass. Whether they are licensed fishermen or unlicensed individuals they are what the law says they are – criminals. I would reckon many of these guys probably do not want to see the fishery opened up at all as their cash cow would soon be wiped out again.

I think we should spare a thought for the fishing crews who put to sea in the worst of the worst conditions, driven by quota restrictions and depleted stocks directly caused by the EU CFP and its open door policies.

I have no doubt that commercial fishing is a tough life for the most part. Why do we have quota in the first place? Why do we have depleted stocks?

Farming is no easy game! There is no doubt that the Agri industry got the best deal way back then when we joined the EU. I reckon we got nothing for nothing from the EU – they gave us structural funds etc. we gave them rights to fish. It amazes me that you do not hear more politicians talk about this when it come down to EU negotiations etc.

I do not think that any farmer is being paid money not to farm at this stage. My understanding is that the single farm payment covers many issues and cannot be considered as “money for nothing”.

imagine the converse situation, where Large ( in farm size !) French and Spanish farmers come and farm at will in Ireland, while small Irish farmers have a tight qutoa to maintain. Fishermen however, get a cheque in the door to have their boats tied to the wall while we import fish....

Along a similar line… Paddy the farmer has cows, bullocks and a few sheep in the one field. He decides to sell some of the bullocks because there is a demand for meat… he goes about getting the bullocks from the field….he kills the cows, the sheep, the rabbits, the badgers, foxes, the birds and anything else that gets in his way. There is a good chance that he will not be able to use the field again for years to come because he has also decimated the grass and any other plants in the field. Now Paddy starts to complain that he has nothing left....so he wants to get at the animals at the local open farm/petting zoo. Good job Paddy does not farm with a beam trawler!

[Along a similar line… Paddy the farmer has cows, bullocks and a few sheep in the one field. He decides to sell some of the bullocks because there is a demand for meat… he goes about getting the bullocks from the field….he kills the cows, the sheep, the rabbits, the badgers, foxes, the birds and anything else that gets in his way. There is a good chance that he will not be able to use the field again for years to come because he has also decimated the grass and any other plants in the field. Now Paddy starts to complain that he has nothing left....so he wants to get at the animals at the local open farm/petting zoo. Good job Paddy does not farm with a beam trawler!

Excellent. I'm going to remember this paragraph.

Not reflecting personal opinion in the previous post there lads. Just relecting the opinion that will be put forward by those who have vested interests on the other side of the debate, as we have vested interests in ours. Devil's advocate and all that . Ya can't bate a good debate.

As sun tzu said.........

'If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle

[Along a similar line… Paddy the farmer has cows, bullocks and a few sheep in the one field. He decides to sell some of the bullocks because there is a demand for meat… he goes about getting the bullocks from the field….he kills the cows, the sheep, the rabbits, the badgers, foxes, the birds and anything else that gets in his way. There is a good chance that he will not be able to use the field again for years to come because he has also decimated the grass and any other plants in the field. Now Paddy starts to complain that he has nothing left....so he wants to get at the animals at the local open farm/petting zoo. Good job Paddy does not farm with a beam trawler!

Excellent. I'm going to remember this paragraph.

+1

there seem to be a lot of posters saying they are definate that irish bass are different from uk
bass and dont move out to the celtic sea in the winter, they quote their sourceas the ed fahy paper,
which says exactly the opposite!!

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We don't really know much about the migratory pattern of the Irish bass, the smaller fish may stay in the inshore waters but what about the bigger bass?
There has been very little tagging done on Irish bass - in the DEFRA study just under 5,000 bass were tagged between 2000 and 2005, but only 179 of these were tagged in Ireland and at the time the results were published (Pawson, 2007) only 5 of these had been recaptured or at least reported to have been captured.
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/2/332.full
As far as I know none of the Irish bass were recaptured outside of Ireland but given the small data set that is hardly surprising and cannot be used as evidence that there is no exchance of populations.

There had been some studies to show there is a genetic difference between Irish bass and the British/French populations:
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/2007/pub ... n-2401.pdf
But it is based on a small sample set and it still does not rule out mixing between the populations, even the authors acknowledged that the notion of separate populations was only a hypothesis.

I would be surprised if there was not some mixing, or at least some migration of UK/French bass carried along the Celtic sea currents. See map of currents below, From the following source:
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/95 ... _Final.pdf

In addition there is also evidence that the migratory patterns of fish can change over time - possibly with the last few bad summers we have had the bass are now behavingly differently, possibly moving further offshore (as they have certainly been distinctly lacking inshore this year).

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Thanks for that Frank. That chart indicates that bass eggs from the SW of UK could be carried to southern Irish shores on prevailing currents.

By way of info (as mentioned on another forum) a bass tagged in North Wales did turn up in Kerry before which may indicate movement between the two populations. More study needs to be undertaken, particularly tagging exercises....something Irish anglers could participate in.

That chart indicates that Bass eggs from the SW of UK could be carried to southern Irish shores on prevailing currents.

Hopefully

a Bass tagged in North Wales did turn up in Kerry before which may indicate movement between the two population

Yes that is mentioned in the Pawson paper -it has been dismissed as a unique anomaly - but since only 5 of the tagged Irish bass were recaptured that one fish represents 16.6% of the total recaptures so maybe not that insignificant after all!!

Pawson also mentioned that a bass tagged and release off the SW coast or Ireland was recaptured 60 km off the southeast coast of Ireland showing some fish do move over large distances.

the scum netting every estuary in the southeast/south coast are more to blame..

Have to agree