FOUR PLEAD GUILTY TO OVER-FISHING WORTH OVER £8 MILLION

Hope this is not going to annoy the commercial spies who seem to be here, but if the cap fits then wear it and report to your masters as soon as you can. Not a bad load of hooky money if they had not been caught, have a look here for full details http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/16828

Hope this will be OK and not like my last report about the commercial boys, which was not that well received.

Regards Wez

will be interesting to see what kind of sentence/fines are handed down to them

they are really clamping down on commericals in england,....hes another article about a different case...http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/9440122 ... ?ref=fbrec and i read last week about 11 fishermen in scotland that have had boats taken off them and huge fines expected to follow..ill try to find that link....

like everything else in this country we will get around to it in about 5 yrs .its widespread through out europe. millions of illigal landings, fish companies owning and weighing there own trawlers.

will be interesting to see what kind of sentence/fines are handed down to them

From what the cop was saying it would seem that they might be cracking down on them, but it is the judges who have the final say and they may well not be on our side, but I think that Europe are the driving force behind it John. I remember seeing that Co Down trawler owner and skipper on the BBC show trawlermen, he had been hit quite hard, but given the chance he would have done it again and they were putting on the poor face and looking for sympathy, poor hard done by fisher men, bit like Hugh Farnely-Witheringstall's show it was all the poor trawler,em, and they telling us to eat more mackerel some advice that was and them being slaughtered big time.

We can live in hope bays it is all we are left with, but if we are depending on the protection men here then I do not hold out much hope.

Regards Wez

it would make you sick to the back teeth
all you ever hear about is "oh these poor hard done by commercials"............. yeah boo hoo hoo!
lets not forget the seas are in the state they are in due to these greedy so and so's taking all they can get and then taking even more!!
illegal fish landings is a multi million poud industry in the uk. i mean what chance do the fish have with all this stacked against them. and lets not forget that for every skipper caught in the act there are countless others who still escape discovery.
the numbers are truely frightening and yet the war cry from the commercial sector is always "we want to take more!".
and that is only the tip of the iceberg regarding the black fish trade in scotland. here is a quote from the scotsman on the same article

" The courts are still in the process of dealing with 17 fishing boat masters operating out of Shetland who have admitted “black fish” landings worth more than £47m" .

here is the link to the full story

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/edinburgh-east-fife/fish_pumped_ashore_via_secret_pipe_to_beat_quotas_court_told_1_2042546

I fully agree with you Al, but at least it looks like the fisheries boys are doing their jobs over there, not like them here they can't do anything they would tell you, like they can't touch a poacher's net unless he is there if they do it might be theft and so on. Here it is not PC to tack on the commercial boys they have too much clout with the TDs and the like. They put the drift nets off here in Kerry a few years ago, then last year they wee allowing them back on again and that after what I was lead to believe was a payment made to them to compensate them for the loss of their fishing, it is a joke the whole fishery protection thing here, the bailiffs would rather go after the rod man and make sure they have licences, they very seldom bother about poachers.I, and the digs on the street here, know one guy who has been poaching all his life in the river Laune, he even has the pathway up to his house, which overlooks the river, lit by solar lights some cheek that, but nothing has ever been done to him that I know of. It is all a joke to the powers that be, they do not see that the future of tourist angling is in a very bad place because of all their inability and uncaring about the state of the fisheries and the fish in them.

Rant over, for the time being. Best wishes Wez