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Gravel Barges upset Anglers


pearley

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I am aware how fishermen are viewed by many on here and to a degree see where people are coming from, grumpy sods or the blood sports angle are both valid but many fishermen have and still are active in  campaigning to clean up and keep waterways open and are often first to spot and report pollution events, I personally have reported a couple.

 

Of course many boaters have and still do similar, the more who support this sort of informal monitoring the better.

 

As reported the chap in the story comes across as a bit of a pratt but it could be a possibility that large boats are stirring up eutrophic/polluted silt and causing fish deaths if this is the case maybe something could be done or it might be a price worth paying for an increase in river trade and the reduction in road traffic.

 

We could of course just shout "fishermen bad" and ignore a possible underlying bigger issue

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2 hours ago, Jerra said:

If there had been steady reports of dead fish I would totally agree.  However CRT say they have only recently been getting reports of dead fish, which as I said the Mrsmelly means either something has changed or CRT are telling fibs.

 

I don't see what CRT have to gain by not telling the truth.

It's because CRT now have a fishing peoples department and managers who dont know what a fookin boat is.

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26 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

it could be a possibility that large boats are stirring up eutrophic/polluted silt and causing fish deaths if this is the case maybe something could be done

 

Of course the easiest thing to do is catch most of the fish and move them elsewhere.  I'm not sure the local anglers would like that too much though!

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2 hours ago, The Happy Nomad said:

The concern would have more credibility if it had come from a local wildlife organisation.

 

I also see no reason why Tim would tell fibs.

I agree with your first point and also your second.   However I can't understand why CRT would tell fibs or for that matter dead fish haven't been constantly reported.

 

OK I don't know the area but I do have a better than fair grasp of wildlife and wildlife reporting.   If there had been constant dead fish in constant numbers it would at some point have been investigated.   Fair enough they will have either decided they can't find the source or it is too trivial a numbers to be of concern.

 

If the numbers have increased so that fish are now being reported when they weren't in sufficient numbers to cause reports before something has changed.

 

I am not saying it is boats it could be slurry or all sorts of possibilities, but if the numbers have gone up something has changed and that is a concern or should be.   I am not an nagler but an angler might say well you would expect boaters to say it isn't the boats.

23 minutes ago, matty40s said:

It's because CRT now have a fishing peoples department and managers who dont know what a fookin boat is.

And that explains dead fish how exactly?

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12 hours ago, nbfiresprite said:

There is always dead fish after a fishing match. What I see of the dead fish round here is that there are

injurys around the mouth from hooks. An injured mouth for any animal should result in difficulty

feeding as the wound heals. The most common causes of death are the physiological stresses caused

by the struggle during capture and injuries caused by the hook or the angler.

The dead fish you see after a match are nearly all the victims of being placed in a keep net, and rarely has anything to do with being hooked. I'm a keen fisherman but have a dim view of these, more fisheries are banning the use of them but i'd be glad to see the back of them.

  It's a shame that the rantings of one deluded individual bring about so much hatred for an entire hobby, much the same with cyclists and occasionally pedestrians that use our canals. One thing i'm sure of is that factionalism will only end badly and there are far more anglers, cyclists and walkers than boaters using the system nowadays. 

 

Edited by BWM
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There's always been tension between the two factions and there are two sides to this.  Before the K&A was re opened there were whole stretches that were in water and the water was clear and full of all sorts of creatures. It was beautiful. Now the water is just greenish murky muddy stuff that light cannot penetrate. I doubt that there is anything like the life in it that there was. Boats churn the water and mud up and there are a lot of boats having an impact on the quality of the environment so I think the fishermen do have a point. Of course if it wasn't for boats those beautiful bits of the K&A would have filled up with vegetation by now and the whole canal would be history but boats do have a negative impact. Mind you some fishermen are just determined to be grumpy wheras there are no bloody minded unreasonable boaters.

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The S&SY has always had big boats travelling on it, I see very few dead fish from them.  I do see dead fish from fishermen on a regular basis I also see BBQs with the bones of fish around them from our eastern European neighbours, it's a fact of life and the normal for them, it does cause problems between the two fishing groups. The waterway in question is and always has been a commercial waterway apart from a few years when Rix, waddingtons and then finally the Humber energy/Princess etc stopped using it. I for one am glad that real boats are once again trading on these underused waterways, sod the fishermen as Tim says plenty of other places to fish and the fish will move there 

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14 hours ago, Jerra said:

If there had been steady reports of dead fish I would totally agree.  However CRT say they have only recently been getting reports of dead fish, which as I said the Mrsmelly means either something has changed or CRT are telling fibs.

 

I don't see what CRT have to gain by not telling the truth.

Not a conclusion supported by the facts.

 

Not unreasonable to suggest that a rise in reports is stimulated by a separate agenda.

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So anglers are great conservationists now. Whilst making breakfast a swan passed my window with a length of fishing line hanging from its mouth. Two weeks ago I saw an angler catch a large pike.  His three mates came and all took photos of him holding the fish. The poor thing must have been out of the water for at least 5 minutes after unhooking. The following morning whilst passing the spot in my boat the fish was floating belly up.

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22 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Not a conclusion supported by the facts.

 

Not unreasonable to suggest that a rise in reports is stimulated by a separate agenda.

It depends on who has reported it and that we will never know.  There is of course a difference between a report from a fisherman against that of a mother and toddler, cyclist, dog walker, naturalist etc.

 

How do you know it is not a conclusion supported by facts?   CRT said they had had reports recently not we have had reports over the last 5 years.

 

Have you a reference which suggests the situation is not as report being what CRT say.

 

Equally it could be suggested that all those posting here being boaters and in favour of the commercial use are stimulated by a separate agenda.   Which is exactly why the situation ought to be investigated by a separate independent group.

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Does anybody know what this is supposed to mean. (taken from the article).

 

“The barges have got a massive section of water coming in and then spitting it back out. We think it’s sucking the fish in and blowing them out and killing them.

 

Have they changed the propulsion system on these barges for their re-introduction or do they still used the same method they have used for decades???. (Surely not)

 

They were running fine when we boated on that waterway and there was no instances of harm to fish or complaints about it back then. There was a lot more commercial traffic too I would wager.

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32 minutes ago, sailor0500 said:

So anglers are great conservationists now. Whilst making breakfast a swan passed my window with a length of fishing line hanging from its mouth. Two weeks ago I saw an angler catch a large pike.  His three mates came and all took photos of him holding the fish. The poor thing must have been out of the water for at least 5 minutes after unhooking. The following morning whilst passing the spot in my boat the fish was floating belly up.

Which is wrong but I could as easily say all boaters are dirty polluting wasters because I've seen a few occasions where dirty oily bilge water has been pumped directly into the canal

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Reports of various occurances will vary depending on the angle of viewing of the reporter.

A good example is the RT   (Russia Today) news channel.What they report is largely true,but presented in a way to slate Europe and the USA and make Russia look good.

As Britain has announced the roll out of Covid vaccine from next week,RT quickly announced that Russia was rolling out their vaccine from Saturday.

Strikes me as school playground politics.

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8 minutes ago, Mad Harold said:

Reports of various occurances will vary depending on the angle of viewing of the reporter.

A good example is the RT   (Russia Today) news channel.What they report is largely true,but presented in a way to slate Europe and the USA and make Russia look good.

As Britain has announced the roll out of Covid vaccine from next week,RT quickly announced that Russia was rolling out their vaccine from Saturday.

Strikes me as school playground politics.

With that term being used with the loosest possible definition. Regional newspapers are rarely know for the quality of their journalism. All they same to mostly do is trawl Facebook for something that is 'trending' and then turn it into a 'story'.

 

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5 hours ago, Bee said:

There's always been tension between the two factions and there are two sides to this.  Before the K&A was re opened there were whole stretches that were in water and the water was clear and full of all sorts of creatures. It was beautiful. Now the water is just greenish murky muddy stuff that light cannot penetrate. I doubt that there is anything like the life in it that there was. Boats churn the water and mud up and there are a lot of boats having an impact on the quality of the environment so I think the fishermen do have a point. Of course if it wasn't for boats those beautiful bits of the K&A would have filled up with vegetation by now and the whole canal would be history but boats do have a negative impact. Mind you some fishermen are just determined to be grumpy wheras there are no bloody minded unreasonable boaters.

A large part of the problem is a lack of dredging, rather than boating in itself. When the gravel traffic began between Denham and Hayes it was accompanied by extensive dredging, and within a short time we had massive hatches of mayflies, Dragonflies hunting and a lot more small fish but within 6-7 years they gradually disappeared. 

4 hours ago, sailor0500 said:

So anglers are great conservationists now. Whilst making breakfast a swan passed my window with a length of fishing line hanging from its mouth. Two weeks ago I saw an angler catch a large pike.  His three mates came and all took photos of him holding the fish. The poor thing must have been out of the water for at least 5 minutes after unhooking. The following morning whilst passing the spot in my boat the fish was floating belly up.

Some anglers are definitely careless and one injured swan is one too many but there are also many swans and other casualties taken to rescue centres by the majority of considerate anglers, and also 90 percent of pollution incidents are reported by the same - particularly on remote stretches and waterways that nobody else visits. I see a lot more injurious crap left behind by "boaters", along with the ubiquitous oil slicks in areas popular with long stayers.

 Pike are one of the most fragile fish and bad handling often results in a dead fish, but time out of the water is rarely a factor - i have carried them from a water that insisted on their removal (death), for over an hour to release in another venue with no ill effects.

Edited by BWM
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18 hours ago, tree monkey said:

I am aware how fishermen are viewed by many on here and to a degree see where people are coming from, grumpy sods or the blood sports angle are both valid but many fishermen have and still are active in  campaigning to clean up and keep waterways open and are often first to spot and report pollution events, I personally have reported a couple.

 

Of course many boaters have and still do similar, the more who support this sort of informal monitoring the better.

 

As reported the chap in the story comes across as a bit of a pratt but it could be a possibility that large boats are stirring up eutrophic/polluted silt and causing fish deaths if this is the case maybe something could be done or it might be a price worth paying for an increase in river trade and the reduction in road traffic.

 

We could of course just shout "fishermen bad" and ignore a possible underlying bigger issue

Polluted silt? Perhaps the fishists could campaign for it to be dredged? 

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When we ran up and down the Coventry and Oxford canals loaded we were always on the bottom stirring up the silt and mud. If you were looking for a boat you could see from the colour of the water some distance away if it had been through. Never saw lots of dead fish floating about. In France on the smaller canal where there is still some commercial traffic the peniche ploughing along at a very slow pace stirring up the bottom and pulling water down in front of them and never seen any evidence of dead fish and there’s thousands of fisherfolk trying to catch dinner there. If there are excess dead fish in the area then it’s very doubtful that the gravel barges have killed them unless the fish are so huge they get squashed.

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3 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

When we ran up and down the Coventry and Oxford canals loaded we were always on the bottom stirring up the silt and mud. If you were looking for a boat you could see from the colour of the water some distance away if it had been through. Never saw lots of dead fish floating about. In France on the smaller canal where there is still some commercial traffic the peniche ploughing along at a very slow pace stirring up the bottom and pulling water down in front of them and never seen any evidence of dead fish and there’s thousands of fisherfolk trying to catch dinner there. If there are excess dead fish in the area then it’s very doubtful that the gravel barges have killed them unless the fish are so huge they get squashed.

The biggest fish have already been caught, ask any fishist!

 

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26 minutes ago, Jim Riley said:

Polluted silt? Perhaps the fishists could campaign for it to be dredged? 

Maybe they could and maybe you could if it exercises you enough.

22 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

When we ran up and down the Coventry and Oxford canals loaded we were always on the bottom stirring up the silt and mud. If you were looking for a boat you could see from the colour of the water some distance away if it had been through. Never saw lots of dead fish floating about. In France on the smaller canal where there is still some commercial traffic the peniche ploughing along at a very slow pace stirring up the bottom and pulling water down in front of them and never seen any evidence of dead fish and there’s thousands of fisherfolk trying to catch dinner there. If there are excess dead fish in the area then it’s very doubtful that the gravel barges have killed them unless the fish are so huge they get squashed.

I don't know the waterway being talked about and I am only presenting possibilities but the Cov is shallow and the stirring up of silt is normal, in effect the habitat has adapted to it.

If a waterway has been boat free for a while the habitat will have evolved in a different way and it is a possibility that a sudden silt load caused by boats could cause, for example, fish deaths.

It is not uncommon for sudden change in a habit management to negatively effect the animal/plant life living there, sometimes this can actually be beneficial long term, other times not

25 minutes ago, Jim Riley said:

The biggest fish have already been caught, ask any fishist!

 

Plenty of massive fish in the canal system

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