OK Andy - never say die....I still think public awareness is a good way & might help the situation.
Maybe some carefully worded letters in our paper is worth another try.
I think if the right people could be told the right things like the fact this discussion is happening on an international forum that has 20,000 members from all over the world, this fact does not favour Guernsey in anyway, in fact it is making our Island look very bad!
Then there is that vid that is also available for all the world to see, we can show the link.
politicians may not have any concerns toward the bass but if we are getting bad publicity through the bass they just might?
I'm not a lost cause yet Mart... Just been doing my tax return and calculating the fact that they owe me £17, not much but on the right side of that line!!! Now I can think freely...
I think we need to bring the finance industry into it and focus on the decline and loss of jobs in the "ever an excuse" finance sector (the one I work for... :naughty). Much as Mr Trotter (aka Del Boy for all the reasons you can associate with that name!!) the Chief minister thinks we are fit and healthy, the loss of jobs and closure of several local institutions (Woolys, Wallace Barnaby, Gabriels? and some more that I can't think of now) however, seems to say otherwise, we need to look at the future of Guernsey plc. Where did the income used to come from? Tourism and tomatoes. OK so the tomato days are beyond saviour but I don't think that specialist tourism is lost forever, IF things are done the right way.
I championed and still believe that Guernsey should and can still be a premier sport fishing location, light lining/fly fishing for macks and gars, bass fishing, even conger and rockie bashing is a big plus to some who don't get those species back home where they come from. In my fishing guide days, I took a couple from oop North fishing for bream and we stuck the float rods out and they both had their first ever garfish on 1.5lb gear. They loved it. I also found a very popular thing for tourist is Bream fishing from the shore. They don't get so many off the shore in the UK and having introduced several people to the mullet method for bream and seeing one of them smashed up by a fish which must have been over 5lb and the child like excitement of it, why the hell aren't we doing something with this???
Look at the spearing boys who make the pilgramage each year. What could be done with more money, proper advertising by the island and of course and investment in that sector in the form of conservation measures to protect the species which are bringing the tourists money into the island.
To see this working we only need look as far as Alderney (they get thousands of angling tourists each year, OK, so it's slightly different fishing to here BUT, they have bans like no shore set nets which we don't, makes a big difference, shore tope? Big bass in close? Plaice and sole by the binful...). Then next up, look at Sport Ireland. How many people used to go abroad for fishing holidays but now go to the Irish Surf Beaches etc to fish for bass, with the heavy conservation measures in place which really do seem to be giving more and better sport to the anglers who venture out there.
An extra thought after I posted originally is that of the value of the GBP. Would I want to go to europe or any EURO country with a rate of 1.1 or less by the time you have commission taken out?? NO!! Same goes for the US Dollar. Much better calue for money than going to Europe or the states with the current economic climate???
Views anyone??
