My weekend moan so please make allowances!

Popped out today for a couple of hours on some free water which is surprisingly good for pike fishing etc but the one thing that spoils it is the rubbish left by other anglers!

I've noticed it on other stretches too - have a good many anglers lost all sense of respect for the riverbank these days? When I was young and went fishing with my father, if I so much as dropped a sweet wrapper I'd have been in trouble let alone leave the stuff they leave behind. The same went when I was in the street - my mum insisted I brought my litter home if there was no bin handy.

Today, there were literally sackloads of plastic bottles of all sizes, empty drink cans, plastic bags, food wrappers, etc along the banksides - you name it, it was there!

I found an empty plastic carrier bag and picked up a few bits near me and brought it home but that was a mere drop in the ocrean of what is left! Heck, I even bring my own cig butts home rather than leave them!

Why can't they just do as I and others do and put their litter in their fishing bag or pockets and dispose of it when they get home instead of cluttering up the river banks and making it look an eyesore!

There now, that's my moan over for this weekend!

Tony

I run a fishery and the anglers are pretty good the pinicers are the worse and the under age drinkers. What a pig sty they leave.

BK

Tony i am like you, and also can't get my head around how you could even think about throwing litter all over with out any conscious thought. Drives me nuts.

yep , no need for it , i constantly pick line up off the bank .. i make an effort to make sure there is no line left lurking about on the bank near where i fish , suprising how many people snap off at the end of a session and dump the line ..

Interesting that those who litter never respond to such posts (yes, you know who you are!), always the "outraged innocents" - just back from hols - beautiful rivers littered with coke bottles, bait feeder packets (fly only!) etc. Don't know why we are always so suprised - so many have so little respect for anything, the bank is a rubbish dump for certain anglers who have no regard for anything, especially their quarry. Sorry specimens of anglers if they can even be called that....
grey

I'm sick moaning about this subject. I take bin bags fishing with me and just clean up the sheite on the way back to the car.

It's not just anglers that dump litter. The public at large is plain blo8dy hideous at this. Early this year before the grass and undergrowth started to grow I decided to count the items of human detritus along the path where I walk my dogs. This is out in a rural environment. I decided to see how many paces it took me to count 50 pieces of rubbish dumped by humans. In one direction it was 36 paces, and on the way back on the other side of the track it was 33 paces. This was just rubbish that was obvious to see. Under the leaf litter and dead grasses there would have been much more.

I find it hard to grasp the idea that people will carry a picnic out into the country, and take it miles to their chosen spot with no problems at all. The bags contain food and drink and will be relatively heavy. When they've had their picnic and the bags are empty and light they suddenly become an intolerable burden and have to be jettisoned on the spot.

The modern idea about picking up after your dog is one I have difficulty with. This seems to be reaching paranoia stages in some areas. In towns I fully agree, but my dogs never go into a town so it doesn't affect me. Out in the country is a different matter. You take a naturally produced, biodegradable material and put it into a manufactured non-biodegradable bag, which then has to be collected from a bin and put into landfill where it remains for hundreds of years. You can always bypass the last bit and hang the said non-biodegradable bag and contents from a convenient branch or fence where it can remain for years, announcing your civic pride to all who pass that way.

The sooner we have a real epidemic that reduces the population by about two thirds the better.

We are very lucky and seldom see litter here, well not where the fishing is. It's too far beyond the usual honey pot car parks for that. Of course the parking areas get litter; piles of Tesco bags containing rubbish that folk are to thoughtless to take home - they treat the moors like it is the middle of a town with 'street sweepers'.

To be honest though, you will never find it more than 100m from the car park and that goes for the people too

In Ted Hughes' paean to west country rivers 'Rain-Charm for the Duchy' he alludes to litter in 'the river'.

"And the Okement, nudging her detergent bottles, tugging at her nylon stockings, starting to trundle her Pepsi-Cola cans,"


Not that it's relevant.... But it's a nice poem for a Sunday morning

__________________
Time is a stream I go fishing in.

YEY YES Bob, Someone who shares my hatred and loathing of the human race and its vile attitude to the world........Sooner nature wipes us off the planet the better.........I once read a saying " People = S**T ", how true it is.....

To blame specimen anglers for bankside rubbish is not right, most proper specimen anglers would leave no trace of their passing....Most fishing realated bakside mess would be left by pleasure?drinking anglers, uneducated thick brats and dog walkers......

Dog walkers well thats a whole gripe in itself, the holiday makers come down to Bude where I am the moment and certain areas of the beach and clifftop paths are festooned with poo bags, even though there are plenty of bins????????....Too much effort!!!!!!!........Or just dont give a S**T cos it aint their beach.....W*****S.!!!....Typical symptom of the human phsycky...

Was up at a moorland ressie yesterday jus walking trying to find space without dogs, screaming brat and people and was quite happy talking to the sheep and ponys then got depressed by finding poo bags and litter and coarse fishing rubbish on a brown trout only ressie !! then remains of fires not covered up and cleaned( no camping is allowed).....Yep people still camp, not caring and clueless about the peat they could set smouldering under their fire thus causing a moorland fire......I then went into the pine forest to look for some pine resin to make glue for some arrows I am making and the first 50 foot of the forest was festooned with the fffffing poo bags and general litter of can, food packets etc,........also the army had been up their recently training and I lost count of the silver disposable water ration bags that littered the forest floor......!!!!!!.....Thats their british forces littering their own playground,....just as well they were not being traked by enemy forces as they had left a lovely visible trail and clue to the size of them......absotulte disgrace.......

So yep moan almost over.......Yep the human race as a whole is too blame for the litter, not enough of us left who give a toss, so its only gonna get worse....The solution ?, well extiction of the human race is the only option I think.....There is not ONE THING THAT THE HUMAN RACE DOES THAT IS OF BENIFIT TO THE PLANET..........THE PLANET DOES NOT NEED US.......

Crash helmet on .....