Cornwall IFCA - proposed new netting byelaw
Informal consultation
We are starting to develop a new byelaw to protect salmon and sea trout from nets set in a number of areas around the Cornish coast where these fish may be found. This will replace an older Sea Fisheries Committee byelaw and bring our management up to date.
If you have experience of catching salmon or sea trout, and/or are engaged in netting activities around the Cornish coast we would like to hear from you.
Salmon and sea trout numbers have fallen hugely around the UK and there is a national plan to improve stocks. We have a responsibility to take action to improve the situation in Cornwall, which may involve changing the ways in which nets are used in some areas. To help us to do that, we need to collect information on where these fish are caught in nets, as well as detailed information about netting activity around the coast, particularly around the mouths of key streams and rivers. In order to do this, we want to talk to anyone with coastal netting experience that would be willing to share their knowledge with us.
We started this work in 2017, when we held some public meetings where fishermen and other interested people provided information about salmon and sea trout in particular areas, and whether they had been caught in nets or by rod and line.
To help us gather more information from as many people as possible with an interest in this issue, we have developed a questionnaire.
Click here to download the questionaire.
In order to help you provide information see below for charts of the different areas identified in the questionnaire. It may be helpful for you to mark these charts and return them to us with the questionnaire.
Click on the title below to open a chart which you can save.
Once filled in, you can returned by email , by post, or by hand . It contains sections for information about nets, as well as a section for people who have caught salmon and sea trout by other means along the open coast. All of this valuable information will help to improve our knowledge about these fish in Cornwall.
We would also like arrange one to one interviews, using the questionnaire and charts as a basis for gathering relevant data. If you are not contacted directly, but would like an officer to come and speak with you, please contact us on 01736 336842.