# Last Four Fishermen Vow To Keep Going



## 6639 (Apr 20, 2006)

This was the sad headlines on the news board outside a local Newsagent in Fleetwood and as reported in the Fleetwood weekly News this week.

It is incredulous and incredible that the once 3rd largest fishing port in the UK behind Hull and Grimsby, and the Premier Hake fishing port in the UK is reduced to less than a handful of fishermen sailing from the port.

It doesn't help that ABP refuses to dredge the River Wyre any more, and Wyre Borough Council has just spent multi thousands on digging half the "ferry beach" away in order to change the flow/flood of the tide in order to scour the mud away from the entrance to the lifeboat station or that noble cause would eventually become a none 24 hour operation.

What has happened to sense of reason to a once vibrant port, or is it all some conspiracy to have the River Wyre designated as a creek and build a bloody barrage across it.

It absolutely disgusts many in this town what has happened to the port and Fleetwood in general, AND IT'S ABOUT TIME THINGS CHANGED.(Cloud)(Cloud)(Cloud)(Cloud)


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## ben27 (Dec 27, 2012)

good day nhp651.sm.yesterday,re:last four fisherman vow to keep going.it is sad news when you and your mates loose your livelihood.and it cannot help the town.i can only wish you good fortune and good catches,regards ben27


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## Day Sailor (Nov 9, 2014)

It sounds as though the fishermen need to get on the town council and get themselves a bit of political clout. They could then maybe apply for an EC grant to get the fleet back on its sealegs. The channel is full of French fishing boats, mainly because of the left wing politics of the north coast (of France) ports.


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

Fishermen are a strange breed at times. In my village on the banks of the River Suir, with its own small harbour, has been used for generations by the salmon fishermen. Then, upriver, a new container port was developed, but the deep water channel had to be continually dredged. The port company decided to build groynes out from the banks to improve the deep channel flow and stop it silting, but that caused our harbor to silt up completely.

The county council then demanded that the port company started to dredge our harbour, as was required by the planning consent for their groynes. The port company then suggested that the solution was to extend the harbour wall outwards to divert the silt flow away from the harbour.

The local salmon fishermen objected violently, upon the grounds that the wall was where it was in order that they could string their nets from it, perhaps missing the fact that salmon nets across deep water channels with box boats trundling up and down was a little impractical. Equally, there was the issue that the salmon season had been reduced to a month or so a year because the French and Spanish fishing fleets had hoovered up all of the bloody fish before they ever got to the river.

The county council thought that it would still be a good idea to protect the harbour, because it could then be available for recreational boating and that would bring income to the village -- a pub and a shop. The fact that is was a way up river beyond a power station and in the way of said box boats was not deemed significant. The salmon fishermen objected to that too, upon the principle that if the harbour was filled with bloody yachtsmen there would be nowhere for them to moor the punts that couldn't be used for more than one month in twelve, and that were mostly firmly aground in any case.

In that, I admit, they had some justification: I recall the night in the pub when they were all giving out about the reduction of the official salmon season. In my innocence I remarked that a reduction of one month in the official season simply increased the poaching season by one month, and that was heartily approved. It was then unanimously agreed that the harbour should be left as it was, because the punts could be slid out over the mud while the wealthy city types and their gin palaces would be stuck firmly, as was entirely appropriate.

The landlord of the pub, and the keeper of the shop, remained to be convinced, seeing potential riches evaporating before their eyes and the unlikelihood of "filum stars" ever visiting their emporiums for a meal of fisherman's pie and soda bread or a pint of milk and a packet of ****.

Oh well, we are a community. We have developed the land around the harbour that we can't use, and we hold village fairs there where we offer home-made jams and cakes from stalls that would cause a hernia among officialdom if they ever knew of it. People flock from the nearest city in their ones and two's to purchase those organic products, and the pub sells them a pint of Guinness while the shop sells them a packet of ****. Meanwhile, the salmon fishermen who manage to capture the odd fish that has escaped the attentions of the French and Spanish hoovers, sell it to the city fish monger who doesn't ask too many questions.

The sad thing is that this was once a thriving fishing community for the salmon and, even further, the mackerel out in the sea off Hook Head, has been reduced to selling cakes and jams on a lawn that once was a harbour. Perhaps it resulted from the intransigence of our fishermen who were simply trying to defend a lifestyle that had no future? Who knows?

Perhaps we are all now living in a global society dominated by the bureaucracy of the EU, where the needs and futures of small communities like mine are irrelevant. Where it doesn't matter that a fishing port is decimated as long as it conforms with the great plan that permits and supports European vacuum cleaners to empty the sea. And then create conservation initiatives that limit the man in his punt or the forty-foot trawler from catching anything while the Spanish factory ship nearby is dumping a thousand tonnes of usable fish overboard because they are under sized according to the rulings of a bureaucrat in Brussels who thinks that all fish come in cans.

So yes, fishermen are a bolshie lot, and perhaps they have reason to be. They are not always right, and may often be wrong. But if you, Joe city dweller, want the convenience of your fish and chips at the local chippie, you won't have that facility for long the way things are going, and my little village is just a prior indication.


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

A most edifying experience of my own life was in 1967 when I spent two weeks aboard a Stornoway trawler. It was quite clear then that a good living was being made, trawling most of the day in the North Minch and landing the catch in the evening at various mainland ports.

A rule of thumb was:-

There's fish in the sea, withoot a doot,
And far more in than'll ever come oot!

I wonder if that notion still stands?


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## Day Sailor (Nov 9, 2014)

I expect the Frenchies will burn Paris when they have reduced fish stocks to levels where they can no longer make a living.


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