stupid rules

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Man is a hunter gather we are competitive by nature in all walks of life no matter what we do we like to be better than anyone else.So now here is someone who wants to supress nature "i give in"

mate, if we all still thought like neanderthals and wipe out the little fellas, in 4 or 5 fish generations time not only will there be no 20cm counters to catch, but seeing as you've wiped out the up and coming generations even the tiddlers will be hard come by. we all bang on about the trawlers rampant disregard for killing small fish, who defend the pratice by saying they are staying within the rules set out by government. yet we see fit to shadow the same pratices and defend ourselves by saying we are staying within the rules set out by clubs and associations in an effort of scoring a few points in a comp. at what point will we see sense and re-focus on what's vitally important. THE SURVIVAL OF FUTURE FISH STOCKS . at the end of the day it will be a grim furure for us all, pleasure and match anglers, when theres bugger all out there to be caught if clubs set rules on fish and hook size, fair enough. but when fishing in comps, my own personal choice would be to try to avoid the tiddlers. i know i'm still gonna get them, but i'm certinly not gonna go out and target them. we fish comps to meet other anglers, fish new marks and have a bit of craic. if we do well it's just a bonus. and in regards to young anglers getting on the cards, you can have a far more productive session away from a set time and venue at a match, that's location was decided months before in advance by reading the shore reports in your area on the site my young lad is living proof of that. we all have our own opinions, to which we are ALL fully entitled to. and it's a matter of personal choice. those who feel comfortable targeting young fish will, and those who don't, won't. unfortunatelly that's just life.

A couple of hundred anglers fishing competitions every so often would have little or no impact on fish stocks, why because we pratice catch and release and most fish go back alive.Think about it what the trawlers take in one swoop would be equal to all the anglers in ireland fishing on the same day and pooled there catch.

i would love to be able to fish for big fish but they are not there now, okay we get the odd one now and again but it's not like it was in the good old days.
My son stephen who is 17 and has been fishing from a very young age has never seen the good times when you could go down to ballygannon with a bucket of crab or mussel and come away with a load of cod "sure that was real fishing". He has grown up in eara of small fish and learned how to catch them from a very young age and is quite good at it, so good in fact he has made the irish team for the last three years.
It has given him great confindence in life and he has made a lot of friends over the years, better him catching tiddlers on the beach in a competition than standing on a street corner doing drugs ect ect.
I think maybe killing a few tiddlers in a competition is a very small price to pay for the benifits of keeping someone like stephen interested in fishing.
I hope the penny drops sometime soon lads.
Long live match fishing for tiddlers.

OK the way i see it at he moment there are there are four diferent options for awarding points

1. A size limit and only fish above are awarded points per size

2. A size limit with undersize awarded a fixed number (5) of points and counters awarded the a fixed number of points (5) plus their size in points (cm = 1pt) but undersize points are capped

3. A size limit with undersize awarded a fixed number (5) of points and counters awarded the a fixed number of points (5) plus their size in points (cm = 1pt)

4. Measure everything and award points per cm

which option is the best in terms of keeping comps fair and minimising the targeting of undersize fish?

totaly agree with rodger on this issue min fish size in my local club is 25 cm and never heard a complaint only people that should be happy with catching baby fish is baby anglers.maybe under size fish could be awarded points in underage comps only as young anglers need to be encouraged into what as everyone will agree on is not a trendy hobbie of our youth today. these people happy too catch u/s fish should maybe think about bringing some young people angling with them that way they will still get the kick of being the best angler ever without winning comps with u/s fish cause in my opinion people who agree on u/s fish in comps are the people who thrive on this kick and dont care who they kick in their journey to get this kick not my intention to upset or insult anyone but grown men should act like grown men

[quote="adam2040" I have seen match rigs with size 10 hooks which seems to me to be targeting small fish and yes that angler won the match with a load of undersize (20cm) fish and so if i want to compete i must drop my hook size and this is the problem. The curent rules are rewarding targeting undersize fish.

hi adam
the angler in your post that won the comp you last fished
never made a rig with size 10 hooks ,i have fished with this angler for years
and never seen a rig with hooks smaller than size 4s
maybe your problem is a size 4 hook looks like a size 10 hook
so maybe your size 2 hook is a 2/0 or 3/0
scale down man to smaller hooks and be competitive
imo point per cm

From a match anglers point of view , things are not that bad yet that we need to count everything
a size limit of 18cm is low enough and this small drop would make a huge difference on the open circuit.

This is the way forward as far as im concerned on the east coast and something that will hopefully be introduced in the very near future for all open competitions.

The size limits individual clubs choose to fish to is strictly there own business.

Some of the Wexford clubs were the first in the country to abolish size limits for there own club master angler competitions and IMO because of the progress that has come of this decision you could with EASE handpick a WORLD class team from Wexford alone and with no disrespect intended that would not have been possible 5 years ago.

It appears that we are all trying to justify our own actions. I still dont see the logic in dropping the size limit so more fish can become counters. Its total crap to say that only a few fish are killed in competetion. I pleasure fish and catch small fish, I am in no hurry to get bait back in the water and so have plenty of time to try and get the hook out and revive the fish in a bucket, and still some dont make it. Now I accept that there are a majority of anglers who have the good of the sport at heart and know that some practice and encourage the use of a large bucket. (seen on a number of posts)

This is a reasonable debate with a lot of solid points being pushed forward and some worthy suggestions put forard by the match side. Its a bit Irrelevant to argue and slag each other off as the fact remains that the laws and rules are set and as long as they are being obeyed then no matter how you feel we have to get along. the debate has been a good eye opener into how different people think. Maybe we should leave it alone and agree to disagree.

alrighty then heres my opinion, i fished as a junior 30 years ago and no fish were returned , ive seen 40 dogfish on a beach dead and that was the winner ,20 other lads had caught fish so how many dead fish that night i only got back to match fishin last year and was delighted to see the catch and release methods , i also agree with jd , you can only catch whats in front of you and should be rewarded with points anglers theses days take great care to see the fish go back in best possible condition, my point is have there been any difference in catches of small fish in the last ten years :has there been a reduction in catches, if not whats the problem

Words like "mass slaughter" and "extinction" make me laugh (not) every time man puts his nose into nature he mostly makes a f**k up! It happened in American when the know-alls tried to save these Trout http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php ... 7110068532

Anglers dont have much to do with the decimation of fish stocks, this has been gone over many times before, on here and many other fishing forums worldwide, who has ever seen figures showing the so called decimation caused by anglers, even the figures that Brussels use for commercial fishing aren't that accurate. Like Paul Mason said, if every club in Ireland held a competition on the same day and every angler caught fish it wouldn't even compare to one haul from a trawler. Dont forget threads like this are read by that organisation beginning with P freaks who take pleasure knowing a wedge is been driven in our ranks.

This whole thread was started by Roger who thinks his solution is right and the rules are wrong "stupid" even. Tell me Roger why is it you think the angler with one counter is better than the angler who catches 100 undersize fish....has the latter not outfished the other, has the angler with one fish only caught one fish, if not then his undersizers will get points too, will they not! or is this an excuse to blame the rules when numbers outfish counters. Most open comps have a heaviest fish prize, right, and the reason is because if they didn't there would almost be no chance of the rank and file angler picking up a prize against the more skilled angler. To come off the beach with a blank card after catching 10 or 20 undersize fish is just not right IMHO

Big fish in a competition are a lottery-vs-skill and always have been, the difference now is that even the big fish are small fish. Will using bigger hooks stop you catching small fish, not that much in my opinion, I have caught postage stamp size Flatties with a 4/0 and a big crab bait while fishing for Cod and! they've taken it way down deep in their belly. You have to remember sea fish unlike their freshwater cousins mostly have big mouths, even the smallest of Whiting or Dabs can take a 6/0 with bait easy enough. To a degree circle hooks will help save fish, but they work best on fish that hit and run and get hooked in the lip or scissors as they run off, Flatties dont hit and run but a circle hook can sometimes be pulled out of a fish's stomach without any damage, unlike a J-type hook. As for "targeting" small fish, get real!! most counters are in by a couple of millimetres and most undersize are out by a couple of millimetres, what does that tell you.

Personally the hook size I prefer to use is 1/0 for match fishing or for pleasure, but getting any fish back into the sea alive must take into account more than the hook size.

1/ If a fish takes the bait deep, I think the best solution is to cut the line as close as possible and release the fish....in theory a small hook will do less damage than a large hook, this may help the fish to live longer. Dont forget angling is a blood sport, we use pointed hooks to catch fish, some fish will get killed, if you dont like that idea, then dont fish! Dont forget a bullfighter is in more control of life and death than an angler is!!

2/ Stress factor can kill fish faster than a hook. Being dragged up a sandy beach or dragged over rocks wont help, than handled with dry hands causing the membrane of the fish's skin to get damaged isnt going to help the fish even if you see it swim off....but it may help the anglers conscience! For match anglers a large bucket will help keep fish alive and if acceptable to the match organizers benefit the match angler with more speed while fishing, if all of his fish can be measured and returned at either a lull in the match or at the end of the match, for the next man or men to sign in 10 fish or one fish makes no difference. This actually makes it harder for someone to cheat IMO

3/ How fish are returned has been mentioned by Pat Spillane, well, fish are great swimmers but sh*te at diving, throw a fish back off a high rock or pier and the impact may kill it. To let the fish flow back into the surf from a bucket they have been kept in is easy enough and makes release at the end of a competition just one task compared to running up and down the beach during the match keeping the fish out of water longer, especially if there is one or 2 pegs vacant next to you.

It has always piss'ed me off to hear anglers going on about how they are holier than thou with this conservation issue that keeps coming up, I dont like to see anything "banned" as such.....this fish size issue only comes up because of catch and release in the first place....years ago before C&R was used in comps it was the MAFF sizes everyone used to say what was in or out, because it was against the law to keep a fish under that size, in those days almost nothing was put back alive that made size, it was either taken home of given away to someone who would eat it.

Eric, you started this one

Tom.

hands up tom it was me ! thats what this section of the site is for some good ideas on both sides of the argument ,some people havnt a clue and some dont really give a hoot ,as a pleasure angler first and foremost who recently took to fishing the odd comp ,i thought the rule change was wrong and opened my mouth wide if anglers want to fish like this so be it ,just dont expect to get many anglers that fish for pleasure to join clubs anymore if this is what they have to look forward too,go back to 2 points for undersize ,it worked fine p.s tom i,m not a conservation freek ,i just prefer to walk on the beach at matches and not dead whiting ,when match anglers describe a match as a saving private ryan i think something is wrong and needs fixing.
dodger

Unless ur hooked on match fishing these rules to some might seem a bit funny or even wrong. But to the people who practice this sport they make perfect sense.

Long Live Match Fishing in Ireland .

I have never meet a match angler who didnt repect what he was catching wether it be big or small fish. Can't say the same for some so called pleasure anglers.

Just one final point....when did it take less skill to catch a small fish than a big one. get real