An angler has been banned from elver fishing for two years after being caught using an illegal net on the River Parrett near Burnham-On-Sea.
The Environment Agency said on Wednesday (September 6th) that Jason Riddle had also been fined £140 and had his net confiscated.
Fisheries bailiffs were on routine patrol on April 5th, 2005 when they saw Jason Riddle using an elver net between Express Park Industrial Estate and Dunball Sluice.
When checked, the net was found to be 1.95 metres in length instead of the maximum permitted size of 1.25 metres.
The net was also found to be illegal in other ways that contravened elver fishing byelaws. It was being used in conjunction with a tethered rope and the handle of the net was fixed to the riverbank by a stake. A float, which is also illegal, was attached to the net to prevent it sinking to the bed of the river.
When operated in this manner, the net becomes what is known as a ‘fixed engine’ or static net instead of a hand-held dip net.
“The use of over-sized nets gives fishermen an unfair advantage over their law-abiding colleagues and enables them to catch additional elvers, thereby reducing the number of young eels escaping upstream and depriving natural predators of a valuable source of food,” said Richard Dearnley for the Environment Agency.
As the government body responsible for enforcing and regulating fisheries, the Environment Agency regularly inspects sites where elver fishing takes place. It is also responsible for issuing licences which cost £65 per year. Around 200 fishermen are licensed to catch elvers in Somerset after the baby eels have journeyed from the Sargasso Sea off the Gulf of Mexico and made their way up the River Parrett.
Elver fishing has become a lucrative activity in the Burnham-On-Sea area with elvers currently fetching around £250 per kilogram. The market fluctuates and prices have previously risen as high as at £525 per kilogram.
Appearing before Bridgwater magistrates on Wednesday, Jason Riddle of Sydenham Road, Bridgwater, was fined a total of £140 after pleading guilty to four offences including fishing for elvers with a prohibited instrument in contravention of the National Eel Fishery Byelaws 2004 and using an unauthorised fixed engine in breach of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975.
The court heard that the defendant was of ‘very limited means’ and this was reflected in modest fines of £35 for each of the four offences.
