Post by nigelnutter on Oct 13, 2005 8:17:24 GMT 1
i am a regular rod and line fisherman in the hamble area,beach and boat, i have fished this area reguarly since my brief detention at the naughty boys home at swanwick(you locals will know where i am on about) back when i was 16.i have had some cracking fish in the hamble river and in the western solent over the years.about two years ago myself and my fishing buddies had noticed a dramatic decline in the fish stocks in the river. the local river fishing crowd had all heard stories of commercial netting occuring late at night at the mouth of the river.well,on the 8th of september i was fishing on my boat by universal boat yard with 1 of my mothers foster kids (a 16 yr old borderline pysco) (rather like i was at that age).it must have been shortly before midnight i had just a small cabin light on and i was tied to 1 of the markers on the middle of the river.when a 35ft commercial fishing vessel appeared with no lights on crawling along at a very slow speed.being a reformed dodgy f****r myself i just knew he was upto no good, so i turned of my light to see excactly what he was upto.he was in the process of delivering a 100 meter long gill net across 1 side of the river.i waited till he was 15 ft in front of me and then turned on all my lights.i knew the harbour masters was shut so i clocked his vessel number,a PE registration and then spotlighted him.upon seeing that they had been spotted they took off at speed ,still firing netting into the river.half an hour or so afterwards we saw a small day fisher approaching us we tried to warn them of the net but they hit it sqare on and got stuck in it ,we untied and helped them out of it only for them to hit it again further up the river.another hour passed and the same scenario was repeated with a rib hitting it. in the morning i handed the details over to the harbour authorities and also the fisheries patrol.they sent me a thankyou letter and a copy of the warning that they sent the commercial boat owners. in my view that isnt really good enough. but as they say every cloud has a silver lining ,for me that is the fact the fishing has considerably improved on the river since these sea anglers have stopped stealing our fish.