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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 11:35:18 GMT -1
Post by PB unplugged on Nov 6, 2005 11:35:18 GMT -1
the blame lies with the pen pushers in their cosy offices. Ah, but aren't pretty well all of us one of the above, these days...? [PB Thinks: "Set up a private firm ... 'Fishery Security Solutions'? Hmm ... not bad for a two-second think. Employ ex Russian and East German Special Forces bods on contract (British citizenship promised as part of the contract package). End of our poaching problem ... though probably the start of some others ... compensation for poachers' families ... hmm ... get some insurance ... do a runner with the Ruskis if it really went tits-up ..." Just a thought!]
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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 11:48:17 GMT -1
Post by sewinbasher on Nov 6, 2005 11:48:17 GMT -1
The biggest joke is that they are not allowed to patrol the rivers alone at night because of health and safety reasons.Therefore if there is only one bailiff in a certain area he can only patrol in daylight, giving the poachers an open season at night ! Is this serious? Surely you jest!
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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 12:16:15 GMT -1
Post by wnion on Nov 6, 2005 12:16:15 GMT -1
The biggest joke is that they are not allowed to patrol the rivers alone at night because of health and safety reasons.Therefore if there is only one bailiff in a certain area he can only patrol in daylight, giving the poachers an open season at night ! Is this serious? Surely you jest! No joke sewinbasher. An ex bailiff told me that last week. What they do now if they have any reports of poaching or snatching fish is to send a "task force" of two or three men to try and deal with the problem. Of course this will be days after any poaching incident has been reported and will involve surveillance hoping that the poachers come back.
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durk
Smolt
Posts: 87
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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 17:24:15 GMT -1
Post by durk on Nov 6, 2005 17:24:15 GMT -1
Highplain's, no trains,-- about three years ago on D&CAC water beat 4, I saw a likely spot, you were in it tucked in the bank, I was new, you took me under your wing, I commented on your use of worms and the time of year having just read the rule book . Do you remember, maybe?
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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 17:43:53 GMT -1
Post by highplains on Nov 6, 2005 17:43:53 GMT -1
Durk,
Nice to hear from you, hope you are getting as much pleasure from the river as I do. As you may recall old age is creeping up on me fast so I apologies that I can not remember meeting you.
I love to trundle a weight free worm in an effort to search out the salmon, my main quarry in the past. However the delights of night time seatrout fishing on the Clwyd have taken over. What a pleasure.
Keep in touch and if you feel I can be of any assistance next season, it will be my pleasure.
All the best and tight lines.
Highplains
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The EA
Nov 6, 2005 19:35:40 GMT -1
Post by Hoppy on Nov 6, 2005 19:35:40 GMT -1
I think that its important to note that we all applaud the work that the EA Bailiffs conduct, they have our full support.
The should be commended for their work, especially with shortages in staff etc and low budgets.
The real problem is the managers etc, the rule makers, the bureaucrats etc. This is where the problems lie.
Hoppy
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 8:24:07 GMT -1
Post by JT Unplugged on Nov 7, 2005 8:24:07 GMT -1
What we actually need is a breakdown of licence revenue and the expenditure it allows the EA to make...
That way the facts are clear and rises in licence fee required to increase baliff headcount transparent.
But are the police not interested in poaching in the more rural areas?
I think that perhaps we game fishermen are paying more but getting less from our licence cash than the coarse community and I'd be interested to see what weighting of expenditure goes on each.
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 10:28:58 GMT -1
Post by charlieH on Nov 7, 2005 10:28:58 GMT -1
the EA are a joke at the moment ..for what we pay a year to fish for salmon and seatrout they should be embaressed ...our waters are not policed and its as simple as that How much does a bailiff earn? Add to this the costs of employing him (National Insurance etc), providing him with a vehicle, make pension contributions etc and you might arrive at a rough figure for what it costs the EA to employ a single bailiff. Now take a guess at how many people fish any given river you know. If you assume that they all buy a full season non-concessionary licence for migratory fish, they are contributing £60-odd to the EA. Clearly not all of this can go on bailiffs; some will go towards other work along the river. And given that many of them will fish more than one river in a season, their contribution needs to be divided by the number of rivers they fish. If they visit just 3 rivers or fisheries in the course of a season, that means they are contributing only £20 per year to that river, to be spent on everything the EA does to benefit fishing, not just employing bailiffs. Of course, more bailiffs are needed on our rivers. I saw a suggestion on a similar thread elsewhere that the Welsh Dee system needed 10 full time bailiffs to police it properly. But just stop for a minute and think what it would cost to provide that level of manpower, and then ask yourself where that sort of money is going to come from. PB's idea of using special forces isn't so very far from reality. I believe it's not unknown for the 'Hereford Gun Club' to conduct night time exercises along the River Wye, and that is reputed to have discouraged a few poachers.
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 12:51:15 GMT -1
Post by PB unplugged on Nov 7, 2005 12:51:15 GMT -1
PB's idea of using special forces isn't so very far from reality. I believe it's not unknown for the 'Hereford Gun Club' to conduct night time exercises along the River Wye, and that is reputed to have discouraged a few poachers. "Vassili, you blasted fool! If I told you once, on starting work with us, I told you fifty times: on the Helmsdale, the ridiculously dressed, extremely loud and barely intelligible, Range Rover drivers are the GOOD guys. Now tell me again: just HOW many did you and Yuri kill....?"
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 14:11:10 GMT -1
Post by charlieH on Nov 7, 2005 14:11:10 GMT -1
Well, that's one way of reducing the waiting time for a tenancy, I suppose. Puts a new twist on the notion of the Helmsdale as a 'dead men's shoes river', too.
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 16:41:23 GMT -1
Post by Gwyniadun on Nov 7, 2005 16:41:23 GMT -1
the EA are a joke at the moment ..for what we pay a year to fish for salmon and seatrout they should be embaressed ...our waters are not policed and its as simple as that How much does a bailiff earn? Add to this the costs of employing him (National Insurance etc), providing him with a vehicle, make pension contributions etc and you might arrive at a rough figure for what it costs the EA to employ a single bailiff. Of course, more bailiffs are needed on our rivers. I saw a suggestion on a similar thread elsewhere that the Welsh Dee system needed 10 full time bailiffs to police it properly. But just stop for a minute and think what it would cost to provide that level of manpower, and then ask yourself where that sort of money is going to come from. Apologise for the intrusion 'Charlieh', but thanks for creating the opportunity, yes there were that amount of 'Bailffs' looking after the Dee at one time in the not too distant past.... the money was there then to employ them.... what's gone wrong here then? funding is increased, that is fact, Bailiff force depleted to '0', explain that if you can. Gwyniadun
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The EA
Nov 7, 2005 20:13:26 GMT -1
Post by Hoppy on Nov 7, 2005 20:13:26 GMT -1
But are the police not interested in poaching in the more rural areas? JT - Im sure that the Police would be interested if they were told, at the end of the day they are there to uphold the law, unfortunately Fisheries law may not be that high a priority on a friday or saturday night? Unfortunately i am not well enough in the know to comment on the priorities of all Police Forces. However what i would like to add is that some of the many new laws introduced by the government may well be help us with our case. 1. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - ASBO's ASBOs are community-based orders that involve local people not only in the collection of evidence but also in helping to enforce breaches. By their nature they encourage local communities to become actively involved in reporting crime and disorder and contributing actively to building and protecting the community. More specifically to Anti-social behaviour - but isn't poaching. This behaviour requires a response which puts partnership into action. i.e Clubs, the EA & The Police. Just as the problems of anti-social behaviour are varied, the solution too must operate equally effectively on many levels. While an energetic and constructive police response is essential, it must be supplemented by engagement from a wide variety of partners. Im sure that the Police would consider this as an idea. ASBOs can only work properly when they are based on partnership in action. As this guidance makes clear, they are powerful instruments, and they will be at their most effective when all the agencies confronted by an individual's anti-social behaviour collaborate to make the best possible use of them. ASBO's could include Harassment of residents or passers-by,Verbal abuse,Criminal damage,Vandalism (all things that poaching may include), but this is not a prescriptive list, the key to this is what effect behaviour has on the community, and we are the Angling Community. The restrictions could be immense, if the idea were to succeed..... You could ban persons being on a river bank, being in possession of a trout or migratory fish, being in possession of fishing equipment. The list could be so effective, if it were to work. I believe that this idea warrants further research, but it may help. The problem here is that it would need more bailiffs and as we know, they are in short supply. It may be that the EA bailiff is more at risk than the fish in our rivers! Come on EA managers, pull your fingers out, we want more bailiffs on our rivers to protect our fish. With more bailiffs on the rivers, the EA really could do something, and the bailiffs would have our full support.
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 10:27:49 GMT -1
Post by charlieH on Nov 8, 2005 10:27:49 GMT -1
Apologise for the intrusion 'Charlieh', but thanks for creating the opportunity, yes there were that amount of 'Bailffs' looking after the Dee at one time in the not too distant past.... the money was there then to employ them.... what's gone wrong here then? funding is increased, that is fact, Bailiff force depleted to '0', explain that if you can. I wouldn't for one minute try to explain, let alone justify, the cut in bailiff numbers, Gwyniadun. I would only comment, as others have done, that we live in an age where the cost/benefit of every little bit of money, both public and private, seems to be carefully analysed. In terms of government expenditure, there's little doubt in my mind that a majority of the population would rather see money spent on schools, hospitals etc than on river bailiffs. Even within the EA, I'm sure that most people would regard such things as flood relief programmes as a better use of money. Much of this has been covered by others already on this thread. My post was simply in response to the implication from Madcaster (and perhaps Hoppy, earlier in the thread) that the revenue from licences should pay for the bailiff force that we would no doubt all like to see. I just don't think the figures add up with the licence fee at the level it is. There is a member of another forum who continually asserts that we don't pay enough for our fishing. It's not a proposition that I particularly like, since it would almost certainly present yet another barrier to recruits to our sport. On the other hand, if we want to see a bigger bailiff force, perhaps we should indeed be prepared to pay the real cost of it ourselves.
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 10:43:45 GMT -1
Post by PB unplugged on Nov 8, 2005 10:43:45 GMT -1
There is a member of another forum who continually asserts that we don't pay enough for our fishing. It's not a proposition that I particularly like, since it would almost certainly present yet another barrier to recruits to our sport. On the other hand, if we want to see a bigger bailiff force, perhaps we should indeed be prepared to pay the real cost of it ourselves. Indeed there is, and he fishes some pretty lightly fished waters. We 21st-Century British anglers have a problem: pay lots more for our sport than we do now, and we will lose many of our present and future numbers at a stroke. Good for some of us, maybe (less-pressured fisheries etc), but bad for Angling and the future of British waters: high numbers of participants who care passionately about fish and fisheries now being our only hope for a relatively assured future. No amount of fences erected and hooded-up security bods hired by a moneyed few will stop the horde of horrors that we all fear will fall upon our fisheries in the coming years. Such people might be able to keep their patch picture-perfect ... but elsewhere, just across a hill, further down the road...
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 10:47:15 GMT -1
Post by PB unplugged on Nov 8, 2005 10:47:15 GMT -1
The inevitable question: "So what's your answer, Paul?"
I'm still thinking!
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 14:34:23 GMT -1
Post by JT Unplugged on Nov 8, 2005 14:34:23 GMT -1
...Just a thought:
How much revenue does guest/visiting angler tickets bring in to the numerous associations (over and above the actual membership revenues)?
Whilst I appreciate that locally-funded habitat improvement etc is costly would the associations be willing to part-subsidise the employment of Baliffs for their water as a dedicated resource?
I'm just thinking that PAA could afford a few bob and at anywhere between £10 and £50+ for a day ticket on other waters there has to be some surplus cash that could be used?
As I said, just a thought.
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 16:04:00 GMT -1
Post by charlieH on Nov 8, 2005 16:04:00 GMT -1
...Just a thought: How much revenue does guest/visiting angler tickets bring in to the numerous associations (over and above the actual membership revenues)? Whilst I appreciate that locally-funded habitat improvement etc is costly would the associations be willing to part-subsidise the employment of Baliffs for their water as a dedicated resource? I'm just thinking that PAA could afford a few bob and at anywhere between £10 and £50+ for a day ticket on other waters there has to be some surplus cash that could be used? As I said, just a thought. Interesting point, JT. As you may have seen, the person I referred to above was having a grumble about PAAS recently. To quote from his post: "PAAS = revenues of £750,000 plus per annum. "Controls" a massive number of river fisheries. Presides over decline. Not a single qualified keeper on the staff. Probably holds the UK record for Himalayan Balsam infestation. No husbandry." I don't know whether all, or any, of the above is accurate. However, if it is true that the PAAS has such a huge annual income and doesn't employ anyone to look after the rivers, that does strike me as pretty hopeless. A privately owned fishery with that sort of income would certainly have full-time staff. It seems to me that they could employ at least a couple of people, possibly in a combined keepering/bailiffing role, to look after their many miles of river. Interested to hear what PAAS members think of this.
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The EA
Nov 8, 2005 17:14:40 GMT -1
Post by Hoppy on Nov 8, 2005 17:14:40 GMT -1
PAAS!
Right there are some problems with the PAAS as with most clubs however i will state...
The Rivers i fish on the PAAS are brilliantly bailiffed, In fact i can only think of two occassions this year when i havent met the bailiff on the river, he was even there in early may, when i was perhaps the only member fishing. I have also been checked on the Dee and on the Esk (not by an EA bailiff). The bailiff on the severn is also very effective.
I was also informed at the Fly Fair that a PAAS bailiff caught two persons in wet suits red handed in the Esk this year (This is a newly acquired water).
I would also add that in Dolgellau, (perhaps wnion can comment) that the PAAS bailiff is also a DAA bailiff. The clubs also stand firm in the face of poaching and if you are banned from one club you are banned from both.
As for work parties, each PAAS water is closed during its prime month, be it for coarse or game fishing to members who have not conducted a working party. Working parties are conducted by members of the club who are in a certain age range, i.e no kids, no oaps, no persons with disabilities, unless they wish to attend.
I have attended these parties for some years now and i can say that at the last work party on the Mawddach over 40 members attended......how good is that. The work was supervised by PAAS staff who are permanently employed in this role....Peter Hindle a really great guy.
The work we conducted was effective, cleaning up disabled platforms, removing debris, to litter picking etc. This is conducted on every PAAS water.
Im sure that the PAAS have a massive annual income do the maths, @8000 members x £85.00 (not including new members who have to pay a joining fee, nor children or other concession tickets). However they also have huge outlays in respec tof water rent, staff costs, club running costs, materials for working parties etc etc.
Also bear in mind that this club is open to all, in repsect of bailiffing im sure that the PAAS bailiffs have many dealings with the EA, but at the same time i bet they would all agree that the EA have nowhere near the amount of bailiffs to effectively police the countries waters.
I also think that if you took the total amount of rod licence holders in the UK, both coarse and game and added them up the figures would be enough to pay EA bailiffs, im sure their wages are far below what they deseve however. I aslo believe that in some ways we do not subsidise other aspects of the EA. If they wont more revenue i would be preopared to pay an increase if it were guaranteed to go back into angling, but i think its about time that other water users are charged. i.e canoeists and the like.
Hoppy
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The EA
Nov 9, 2005 6:43:25 GMT -1
Post by JT Unplugged on Nov 9, 2005 6:43:25 GMT -1
Two things...
Whilst there are undoubtedly overheads what I was wondering was whether revenue from the guest tickets issued could subsidise extra baliffing (sp?).
The other thing is really finding out whether our coarse brethren get a larger share of the revenue pot for the more inexpensive licence fee.
No doubt we need more baliffs but how to pay for 'em if the original funding stream is reduced?
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The EA
Nov 9, 2005 8:14:52 GMT -1
Post by sewinbasher on Nov 9, 2005 8:14:52 GMT -1
I generally agree with Hoppy on this. The PAAS generally do at least try to take their water management seriously and you are far more likely to meet a PAAS bailiff once per month than an EA bailiff once per season.
By the way there are no Guest/Day tickets on the PAAS other than memberships issued to non-anglers who want to accompany fishing members.
I do feel that they are a little reluctant to get into the 21st century and develop an admin that matches the size of the income. No reflection on the current officers who do a great job considering the size of the membership but the sytems are primitive. For example you would expect that membership fees could be paid by Direct Debit and or electronically and much better IT systems.
I fully approve of the Working Party system as being a member (sometimes a Committee member) of several clubs I know that it is very hard work to get members to give up a day's fishing to do essential bank maintenance, without this system its always the same 1% of the membership that are willing to turn out and the rest just get the benefit. All clubs are the same on this.
I give up three or four days a year to other clubs for river maintenance and thus do not join PAAS working parties being fortunate enough to have other good local water available and thus I'm not greatly inconvenienced by the exclusion from the best of the PAAS Dee beats in October - which, bearing in mind that at least 80% of the Dee salmon are caught in October in most seasons, is a serious potential penalty.
Where I do have a current issue with the PAAS is their policy on membership fees for Intermediate anglers. The Junior rate is OK but the next level of membership is required to pay £45 which is too much for kids still at school and who by nature of their age do not have any access to other than their local waters unless taken by an older member. Despite asking for the details I have still not been able to find out just how many of the members fall into this category as I'm convinced that the financial argument for this level of fee will not stand up as I suspect that only a very small proportion of the membership is older than 16 and in college/school. We need to be keeping these people in clubs and angling generally and not pricing them out. Most other clubs that I belong to keep membership rates very low until the angler is a) old enough to be working and b) is likely to have a car and thus access to all of the waters.
I know that there is an argument to compare membership with the cost of computer games and the like but it all has to come out of one pot and its not fair to ask any kid to have to pay a big chunk of their disposable income into a fishing club. We need to encourage young anglers not penalise them.
I was also recently a bit disturbed to be told that from this year onwards the information on catches of salmon and sea trout from specific beats are to be kept secret from the general membership and given to the committee and officers only. I think that the club's management sometimes forgets that it is the servant of the members and not vice versa.
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