Channel Islands Bream

[shytalk]

a source in guernsey says a local trawler over there landed 16 tonnes of bream recently . and guernsey fisherys want to impose a 2 fish per angler per trip for visiting boats !!!!!!!!!!

[Bob F]

[Newboy]

16 tonnes aren't going to dent the bream population but we anglers do a lot of damages, easily wipe out the species in days ....

[Adam F]

16 tonnes aren't going to dent the bream population but we anglers do a lot of damages, easily wipe out the species in days ....

 

Sorry Kam - but what a load of bo$$ocks!

 

16 tonne of bream is one hell of a lot of fish - esp for one boat

 

Yes, sure anglers will damage stocks, but even a whole charter fleet from a port like Weymouth wouldnt land 16 tonne of bream in a month!

[Paul D]

Adam,

 

I suspect Kam was being sarcastic ??

[duncan]

indeed

 

did notice when looking at all the figs last year theough that the bream commercial landing tonnage was huge relative to various other catches - esp flatties

[Adam F]

I suspect Kam was being sarcastic ??

 

Ah! OK, sorry Kam, off soapbox now - all is forgiven!

[toerag]

Pair trawling for bream off Guernsey has been going on for years, mainly by the french. It also goes on off sussex, and probably nearer your neck of the woods too. Although it's not really agreeable, as anglers we have a dilemma - do we stop them pairing for bream for 4 months of the winter and force them to trawl the banks for flatties, or do we leave them to the bream? It's a nasty situation, because if the pair team are displaced onto the banks then there won't be enough bank fish to go round. This will mean the current banking boats will start gillnetting or longlining, and so on.

The reason for the potential angler bag limits for all the species put forward is because if there was just a bag limit on flats then people would concentrate on the bass, and so on and so on.

Displacement of effort is a real minefield. Currently Defra have increased the pollack quotas in the western channel to try to discourage boats from targetting cod, for which the quota is in danger of running out due to high catches earlier in the year. There is a real possibility of a cod ban this summer.

In an ideal world, lack of quota/fish would make boats give up fishing, however fishing is addictive and fishermen just won't give up until they're old and knackered.

If you're interested, the pair team doing the bream will be on the banks this summer, both are shelterdecked, one is red & white, the other is blue and white. Both are around 14m long. The French boats I see in winter are normally 20+m long, so in the grand scale of things the Guernsey team is a drop in the ocean.