Some notes from a Fisheries forum meeting on April 9th.

Please note the underlined section of item 9 relating to canoes.  Our old friend SMS takes credit for arranging canoe access agreement with take no regard to riparian or anglers rights.    It seems he operates by persuading a landowner to give access to the river  for canoes -then finds another one willing to do the same further downstream for egress and hey presto canoeing takes place and tough sh=t for anyone in between.  Its a disgraceful way to carry on and indicative of the way WUF has been run over the years.   Trample anyone who gets in the way of certain peoples 'aspiration'

It seem we now have  Affonyd Cymru claiming to  represent anglers with WAG.  Who voted in the Chairman, what right does he have to speak for me or any other angler in Wales.  None whatsoever but I don't suspect that will stop him,.
What I wonder will happen to WUF under the present situation and financial constraints.  Well hopefully it will be a slimmed down more effective and open organisation with new personel at the top directing it.
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Meeting notes;

Pat Lindley said that a recommendation paper has been sent to NRW pointing out that:

1.    There is no Welsh policy to deal with the conservation conflict.

2.    There is insufficient data on the impact (difficult to believe from the graphs).

3.    The decision making process may not be robust and open to legal challenge from ‘Wild Justice’ (the impression was that they are afraid of Packham and his cronies and want to avoid a judicial review). 

The present ‘study’ will continue until 2021 and this may then lead to ‘public consultation’ and a further delay.  It is unlikely that any recommendation would come into effect until 2022 at the earliest.  I am not holding my breath for any positive action.

6. A Plan of Action for salmon and sea trout.  Due to difficulties with the internet connection for PG it was left for DM to update everyone.  The final draft has been completed, once finalised this will be available to everyone.  Whilst I have seen the final draft unless there is commitment from WG to fund the improvements we will just have another glossy brochure.  I suspect that once the present COVID-19 crisis is over funds will be hard to come by.
7. Provisional Stock Assessments – verbal.   A quick verbal update was given by DM.  The provisional stock assessments for 2019 are in draft form and will be included in the ICES report this will be made available to LFG’s.  It seems that juvenile surveys of sea trout may be used to extend the ‘All Wales’ byelaws to include sea trout.  Although not confirmed I expect that this will yet again be an ‘All Wales’ policy irrespective of rivers which are not at risk.  SMS said that he would like to see the byelaws extended to ST immediately.
8. Angling promotion.  NRW and Visit Wales are working on the website in order to attract anglers to Wales.  This will include all angling disciplines.  The rules for accessibility of documents on the NRW website mean that they will not publish large files on the website and anyone searching will only find ‘headline issues’.  It seems that this rule is due to many who log onto the NRW/Visit Wales websites now do so using smart phones; this seems more to do with saving data use by users than providing essential information.  I raised the issue of the publication of the new byelaws on the NRW website and the difficulty in finding regulations for individual rivers which were previously available in a pdf document.  I had already raised this with Dave Mee and pointed out that fishing near obstructions is now listed as ‘Safety near obstructions’ it is unlikely that anglers will find this information and could result in visiting anglers inadvertently breaking the rules by fishing in weir pools.  I had already suggested that links be provided from the list of rivers to the appropriate sections on restrictions near obstructions (either manmade or natural).  DM said he would look into this – I am not holding my breath of any improvement.  How effective this promotion will be remains to be seen but at least it is a step in the right direction.  The issue of attracting youngsters into fishing was raised as the present demographics means without youngsters taking up angling we are a dying breed.  The same applies to other recreations with golf following the same downward trend as angling – this is nothing to do with a lack of fish in our rivers or around our coasts.  More fish will of course help in recruitment (many ‘put and take’ trout fisheries have closed due to lack of anglers) but our dwindling fish stocks are unlikely to recover quickly despite the draconian measures which have been placed on anglers – we are not the problem!
9. Updates From Other Fora.   Feedback was given on the Wales Water Management Forum this was mainly about the planning work but most of this is on hold due to the present crisis.  Copies of the Wales Land management Forum minutes were sent out with the agenda notice Creighton Harvey who is a member of the forum could not provide any further information due to confidentiality presumably as NRW/WG don’t want to antagonise the farming community.

Feedback was given by SMS on The Wales Access Forum.  I yet again raised the issue of disturbance of fish on spawning grounds expressing my very real concerns with respect to our North Wales spate rivers.  I pointed out that there is little point in having more fish reach the spawning grounds should the byelaws be effective only for these fish to be driven from spawning areas by paddlers.  I will need to see how this is recorded in the minutes as Steve Ormerod said this would be noted as a personal observation.  The implication of the comments from SO leads me to think that in pursuit of access NRW is prepared to ignore environmental damage and rules will only apply to anglers with respect to protection of fish stocks.  I also raised the issue of Canoe Wales refusing to partake in voluntary agreements.  SMS stated that he had negotiated 120Km of access without any involvement from CW adding that there are riparian owner and angling clubs who would not join in negotiations and that he (Afonydd Cymru?) would simply negotiate access irrespective.  From this I take it that he will agree with landowners for access and egress points on Welsh rivers and that anglers and riparian owners will just have to put up with paddlers passing over their land.  As I have said previously SMS doe not represent anglers or riparian owners and is promising delivery irrespective of landowner’s wishes, my impression is there is nobody at the Access forum representing our interests. Chris I agree entirely on your point about Canoes and the fact that all feeder streams and the areas where salmon spawn on the upper reaches of main rivers should be no go areas anglers have given enough. On access the agreement negotiated by SMS does not cover all the Usk and the lower Usk Owners are coming together to make joint one. They will not have what amounts to open access. This is being progressed by the Usk Fisherman’s Association.

10. Other Updates.  NRW (DM) provided an update on the COVID-19 implications with respect to licence sales.  It seems that some who have purchased an annual licence are looking for a refund; this is not likely to be forthcoming.  The implication of the loss of income from licence sales does not bode well for the future as it is unlikely that WG will be in a position to make up any shortfall in the fisheries budget due to lost licence sales income. 
11. Any Other Business.  Creighton Harvey raised the issue of incident reporting and the lack of support from anglers due to poor response.  CH gave some examples where there had been difficulty in obtaining incident report numbers and even when these are provided there being very poor feedback.  This is a common complaint from anglers across Wales not helped by the lack of an effective enforcement team.

I asked about the lack of stakeholder representation on the Stock Assessment Working Group pointing out that there are no stakeholders on this working group which is developing a revised methodology for stock assessment.  The chairman (SO) asked if this was a working group why are stakeholders not included.  In answer to this DM (we had lost the PG internet connection) said that this was a working group from NRW/EA/CEFAS and they are using a statistical modeller to produce a revised methodology.  The impression from DM is that stakeholders could not provide any useful input to this meeting; it will be interesting to see what is recorded in the minutes.  The problem for the statistician is their starting point has to be based upon reliable data, it has been pointed out repeatedly that the data used by NRW is essentially floored i.e. the data on angler participation used in the present model is based on figures from a single river in 1993 and no longer reflects the reduced number of anglers who fish in 2020.  This single error results in the whole data sets being skewed.  It would be nice to provide some input to make sure a model is produced which actually works based on current participation.

The next meeting will be on 19 November 2020, venue to be advised.