LT1020 Jolene of Orford East Anglian drift sole trammel netting and potting. Pisces-RFR

[@garythomas3219]

Must be a soft bottom to be able to fish those pots with just net as a base

[@pacman4568]

And This is why there are so few sole left

[@mrmat099]

this old vlogging r better..nice

[@kev596]

they say never cut towards yourself with a knife?.

[@weymufffisher]

I'm interested at having ago at drift sole netting,any info on depth of water and how much tide? ta

[@malcolmmacgarvin6998]

+weymuff fisher - I've checked the date and it was 9th July 2009 - was looking for an online tide table that could go back that far to tell you state of tide but couldn't find them. You may have more luck! They were drifting the nets along the sandbanks - could only be that way. I suspect that they were on the bottom of the trough rather than the sides, but don't know for sure - sorry to not be of more help

[@gaycha6589]

No gutting table? You'll hut yourselves one day. Too many slips but nice catch

[@aman2welly]

I think you should use a larger mesh net instead you are killing small fish then discarding them. It's wrong and unnecessary

[@malcolmmacgarvin6998]

Hi +Landshark Sentinel I don't actually do the fishing - I go out and document them. So the short story is that, at the time (2009), as the text says, we also decided that we preferred to source larger sole, because we *also* had concerns over the size. As also described in the text, relatively few were below the legal minimum landing size, but if the nets were cleared as they were hauled (as some other boats do that I've documented), the survival chances of those fished might be improved (because the soak time of the nets is very short they are very alive when they come over the side). So that's the short story. But there is a longer story, which is not so straightforward: Since the late 1990s fishing mortality of North Sea sole is reported by the assessment body ICES to be decreasing, and stock size to be increasing since 2007 such that it is now at the level that supposedly supports the theoretical maximum sustainable yield, although the fishing pressure is still slightly above that which - theoretically - should have been required to get the stock to that MSY. So, on the basis of conventional assessments, it is difficult to argue that this fishery, as it is and as part of a mix, was unsustainable. You can see the relevant assessment here: www.ices.dk/sites/pub/Publication%20Reports/Advice/2015/2015/sol-nsea.pdf But there is an even longer story. I'm not particularly convinced by such assessments, partly because they don't take into account the impact of one stock (rare or abundant) on the other stocks. [And by the by, if you let sole, cod and other species grow larger, you are not necessarily guaranteed larger overall catches, because the now more abundant larger fish preying on many times their body mass of smaller individuals to get to that larger size.So it is quite tricky making predictions]. Since 2009 I've become interested in a concept called balanced harvesting. That suggests that we should instead concentrate primarily on the size and shape of the overall biomass 'pyramid', ignoring species, with plant plankton at the bottom and progressively bigger fish (eating the smaller ones underneath them) as you go up the pyramid. That's because the shape of the overall pyramid turns out to be very predictable, even though the abundance of individual species within it are not. As a result of fishing we have both flattened that pyramid (i.e taking mostly bigger fish) and consequently broadened the base (because there are not so many big fish to eat the small ones). Note this is 'big fish' not 'big species' as virtually all fish, including blue fin tuna start tiny and work their way up through the food web, and prey and predator relations depends on size - what you can get your mouth around - rather than species. According to balanced harvesting we should first fish to restore the shape of the pyramid to the original condition (steeper sides, more big fish) and then catch a fixed proportion of each size class off the side of the pyramid. That woudl result in more stable fishing yeilds. Because we don't know how to predict fluctuations between the individual species of any size class (even though the total number is predictable) according to balanced harvesting we should just take out species *within each oveall size class* in proportion to their abundance. So that's quite a change in management philosophy. It probably also requires that fishers have licences for areas, rather than species, and then change métiers depending on whatever is around at the time, which is in effect how fishing often used to be done out of necessity. That would be a huge revolution. It implies that we, and you, might be wrong to favour large fish. Instead we should overall be eating more smaller fish - whitebait (ie juveniles), anchovies etc. Without balanced harvesting this theory predicts that fishing will continue to be as chaotic as in the recent past, because it is chasing shadows by trying to predict individual species abundance, which may well be impossible.