Back in the game

[esoxlucius]

This baby came in the post today. I'm on holiday for two weeks at the end of June/ beginning of July so I'm hoping to get out and catch something. This rod licence covers the rods and keeps the environment agency sweet. All I need now are the day ticket permits for which ever venues I go to, and then I'm all legal.

Hopefully I'll post a few pics of what I catch!

 

[esoxlucius]

Spent a couple of hours on the bank today. A real mixed bag of small and quite big fish. Common carp, mirror carp, roach, perch and right at the end a slimy eel!! A few random pics as I was going along.....

 

[The Masked Shadow]

European perch are so pretty!

 

[esoxlucius]

European perch are so pretty!

Yes they are, and very greedy. That little fella took a prawn that was meant for tench. The prawn was half the size of the perch, lol.

 

[The Masked Shadow]

Good job! Keep on hookin (that sounds wrong)

 

[esoxlucius]

Caught a load of these today. They are common bream, a shoal fish. If you bait your swim up correctly and you get into a shoal of these you're going to be pretty busy, as I was, lol.

They can get huge, nudging 20lb, and such specimens are referred to as "dustbin lids" because if their extremely deep flattened body shape. Unfortunately the average size of the bream in the lake I was fishing probably only average around the 2lb mark, but they were good fun.

 

[robmcd]

Very cool!! Looks like you got your rods nice and broken in, especially with those carp!!

It seems that you need to jump through a lot of hoops to fish in England. Licenses and local permits?

 

[esoxlucius]

Very cool!! Looks like you got your rods nice and broken in, especially with those carp!!

It seems that you need to jump through a lot of hoops to fish in England. Licenses and local permits?

Angling is the biggest participation sport in the UK, and by some way, even surpassing football! So there's money to be made.

The rod licence is absolutely nothing to do with the actual fishery you choose to fish at. The rod licence money goes to the environment agency, and they have "officers" patrolling random areas just turning up unannounced at fisheries. You send off for your rod licence at the beginning of each season and they send a little card to you, with a fish on, see post #1. You put it in your tackle box and you don't need to worry about the officers then as you're covered.

Then you choose a place to fish. Usually you start fishing and guys come round collecting the fee from you, which can vary depending on size of lake, popularity of lake and type/size of fish in the water. The fisheries guys don't give a hoot if you have a rod licence or not, it's not their jurisdiction, and the environment guys don't give a hoot if you've paid to fish or not, they're basically separate entities focused only on getting what the angler owes them.

Occasionally, as happened today with me, you'll be fishing and no one will come round to collect the money. So you get a free days fishing, well three hours in my case today. It doesn't happen that often but it's a nice little bonus when it does, lol.

 

[robmcd]

Angling is the biggest participation sport in the UK, and by some way, even surpassing football! So there's money to be made.

The rod licence is absolutely nothing to do with the actual fishery you choose to fish at. The rod licence money goes to the environment agency, and they have "officers" patrolling random areas just turning up unannounced at fisheries. You send off for your rod licence at the beginning of each season and they send a little card to you, with a fish on, see post #1. You put it in your tackle box and you don't need to worry about the officers then as you're covered.

Then you choose a place to fish. Usually you start fishing and guys come round collecting the fee from you, which can vary depending on size of lake, popularity of lake and type/size of fish in the water. The fisheries guys don't give a hoot if you have a rod licence or not, it's not their jurisdiction, and the environment guys don't give a hoot if you've paid to fish or not, they're basically separate entities focused only on getting what the angler owes them.

Occasionally, as happened today with me, you'll be fishing and no one will come round to collect the money. So you get a free days fishing, well three hours in my case today. It doesn't happen that often but it's a nice little bonus when it does, lol.

That's not too bad. Everyone is getting a piece of the pie it seems.

Funny thing. Most of the fishing that I do nowadays is down in Costa Rica, and there is no licensing system down there that I know of, and I have done a lot of searching for info on the subject. The biggest issue down there is getting permission to fish in some areas, because to them fishing means catching large amounts of fish, and taking them home for consumption. When I try to explain that all I want to do is catch, photograph, and release, they look at me like I am crazy. Like, why would someone go through all of the trouble to go fishing only to set everything free?

 

[esoxlucius]

That's not too bad. Everyone is getting a piece of the pie it seems.

Funny thing. Most of the fishing that I do nowadays is down in Costa Rica, and there is no licensing system down there that I know of, and I have done a lot of searching for info on the subject. The biggest issue down there is getting permission to fish in some areas, because to them fishing means catching large amounts of fish, and taking them home for consumption. When I try to explain that all I want to do is catch, photograph, and release, they look at me like I am crazy. Like, why would someone go through all of the trouble to go fishing only to set everything free?

Fishing for pleasure is done at the lakeside, fishing for consumption is done at the supermarket! Lol.

Besides, many of the fish we catch are classed as "coarse fish", as in rough to eat. So you're doing your palette a favour by throwing them back, lol.

The guys in places like Costa Rica, understandably, will never be able to get their heads round catch and release as they've always associated fishing/hunting as providing food for the family to survive. I'm not surprised they view you as some kind of a nut case, lol.