number of anglers

[EYES OF TYNEMOUTH]

Hi, This is the first post i have posted and it may seem a strange one, Does anyone know how many sea anglers there are in the uk ( only a estimation will do ).
What Iam trying to do is to work out how many tons of cod we catch compaired to the trawlers. Me personaly it is about 3 pound of cod, i the will post it to defra, its worth a try anyway.

[Stores]

About 1.5 million regulars Tynemouth, or may I call you eyes lol

[mark]

moved it here, probably a better place for it

[The Great Wallsendo]

Welcome to NESA mate...let us know how you get on

[EYES OF TYNEMOUTH]

This is of the top of my head with 10mins research It states from the DEFRA document 2.1 (The primary desire on the part of anglers is to catch more un-measurable
elements such as the quality and accessibility of angling sites,
and bigger fish.) Me personally I don’t fish to catch more and bigger fish all the time it would spoil the reason why I fish , If I catch it is a bonous it’s the release from every day pressures, that is the main reason for me.
How are the going to improve accessibility!
It also states “Sustainable angling practices (‘catch and release’ through to ‘catching
sufficient for the table’) if we all caught enough fish, that we had more than we would use for our families then we are all doing very well indeed.
It also states”Appropriate hook selection for size and species of targeted fish
• Appropriate terminal tackle selection to minimise tackle losses Don’t we do that anyway.
The North sea cod quota for 2007 was set to 19,957,000tonnes for commercial fishing.
We as sea anglers, 1.5millon of us ( I may be wrong) if we average 30pound of cod each per year that’s works out as 22thousand 500 tons compared to 19millon 957 thousand tons allowed by trawlers

please feel free to add to this
Iam in bed with the dreaded man-flu going for a short walk in 5mins

[mark]

The North sea cod quota for 2007 was set to 19,957,000tonnes for commercial fishing.
We as sea anglers, 1.5millon of us ( I may be wrong) if we average 30pound of cod each per year that’s works out as 22thousand 500 tons compared to 19millon 957 thousand tons allowed by trawlers

I don't know the exact figures, but suspect these are way out nearly 20 million tons!! I suspect not somehow, think about it, if a car weighs around a ton, imagine a pile of 20 million cars!

if each fish weighed 4lbs on average that'd be 40 billion cod, or nearly 700 fish per year for every man woman and child in the UK, need a serious pile of mushy peas to see that lot off

If we did average 22500 tons a year the commercial operators would go nuts, Pretty sure this years commercial quota is around 20,000 tons (I think?) If leisure anglers were catching more than the commercials you can bet there'd be a stop put to it sharpish, plus god forbid that the EU or government were to think there were that much fish available.

there may or may not be 1.5 million anglers, but the vast majority will live outside the cod obsessed north east, on the south coast, they get as excited about catching a cod as we do up here about catching a bass

I'd be surprised if shore anglers accounted for more than a few hundred tons of cod a year at the extreme, probably much much less

[mick dunn]

What about anglers like me who have only caught one cod this season and put it back.

[The Great Wallsendo]

Even as a relative novice I can say that I have caught more than an an average of 30lb of fish in the last 12 months (I know the original premise was only Cod)

Over a dozen Cod alone - with a shore and boat average of 2.5lb that makes me at 30lb already

Add to that Ling - one lad on here had his PB of a 30+lber during the summer and doublers are frequently being landed all the time

So you can add another 15lb just for Ling caught

Then add all the smaller species...

Mackerel - dozens and dozens of the b*ggers at 3/4lb average...lest we forget that some people will gladly boast of hundreds

so lets say I've only caught 40+ mackerel...that's another 30lb of fish already

then there's Coalies, whiting, flatties etc etc most chucked back but lets assume I kept 'em...another 10lb say of all the smaller species

So already I've prob pulled in over 85lb of fish just for myself...and I know there are lads who have caught a lot more than that...

even by using this layman mathematics it's easy to see that recreational anglers are prob pulling in a fair weight of fish that could compare quite easily to the quotas laid down

Granted this only equates to fish KEPT and does not factor in the huge amount of wastage that commercials invariably chuck back dead

[EYES OF TYNEMOUTH]

I stand corrected, I did say I had flu, new data that’s just come in! , 2006 the uk fleet landed 21 thousand tonnes of cod and 40 thousand tonnes of haddock and around 100 thousand tonnes of mackerel maybe I shouldn’t go down that route and try and do the figures, I suppose trying to get an average of catch's by anglers is nearly impossible ,I do apologise to everyone . But I will be back.

[LeonRoskilly]

Follow the links given from here and you'll discover all manner of statistics relating to angling (and commercial fishing):

Worth of Recreational Sea Angling

By the way, each EU nation is supposed to be supplying figures for the Recreational catch of Tuna and Salmon, with Cod being recently added to the list, and BASS in the future.

(But in an EU context 'recreational fishing' also includes fish caught with nets and trawls by unlicensed fishermen which isn't sold on ie for personal use)

[Rod_bender]

What about anglers like me who have only caught one cod this season and put it back.

Same here mate
In fact i cain't remember the last time i took a cod home for the pot, and iv'e took maybe half dozen whitting home this year at most..

[EYES OF TYNEMOUTH]

thanks, I will try that

[davem2005]

Couple of figures according to SSACN...

15+ million fish discarded in the Nethrops fishery (Thats prawns to you and me) in the Clyde alone.
500+ million fish discarded throughout the scottish fishing region.

Anglers catches dont even scratch the surface when compared to those kind of figures.

Defra have asked anglers to provide catch figures to "monitor stocks" a request that was greeted with some scepticism when put to a group of anglers representatives.

There was also mention of the introduction of fish catch log books similar to that used by salmon anglers when fishing in angling only areas. All we need now is the angling only areas.

Cheers
Dave

[EYES OF TYNEMOUTH]

Just looked at the Worth of Recreational Sea Angling
and it seems a mine field of info, its way over my head. just trying to be helpfull

[davem2005]

It can be daunting reading tons of technical stuff with all the letters instead of names.

It gets easier with practice :/