As many will know the Devon & Severn Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority have been holding a formal public consultation on proposed amendments to existing commercial and recreational Netting Permit Conditions in the Salcombe and Kingsbridge Estuary.

Subject to the outcome commercial fishermen will be able to operate a six-month fixed net fishery within the Estuary to target ‘grey mullet species, with a bycatch of bass, gilthead bream and a few other fish species’. The bycatch of bass, they say, can only be landed in January.

However, and as the Society has made clear in its response, any bass caught in any of the other five months are hardly likely to survive. Indeed the D&S IFCA’s Byelaw and Permitting Sub-Committee concluded a mortality rate of 18.8% of bass, caught during the netting trials within Salcombe Estuary, was acceptable.

The Salcombe Estuary is of course a bass nursery area. And net fishing in such predominantly shallow waters may well do other significant ecological and environmental damage.

As far as we can ascertain there is no legal tradition of trawling or fixed net fishing in the Estuary, while the D&S IFCA have themselves previously said:

… continued access to estuary netting for mullet will promote discarding of bass, as mullet and bass stocks are impossible to target separately within the confines of an estuary. In addition, the Authority takes the view that in the past some fishers have targeted mullet as a means to continue to illegally take bass from estuaries.

Nor is the Society alone in objecting to the proposals. The changes are also being opposed by such organisations as the Angling Trust, the National Mullet Club Wyvern Region, and the Bass Anglers Sportfishing Society.

Details of the Consultation, which closes this coming Friday (19 January) can be found here.