Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network

The Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network have proposed that anglers wishing to take a fish for the table should adopt their GFAC sizes.

The goal of this voluntary measure is to ensure an angler using these sizes as a minimum, can be reasonably certain that a fish has had a chance to spawn. They use reasonably because size can vary by time, geography, year class, climate, stock and any number of other factors.

Each species also has an ‘at risk’ rating reflecting its general status in Scottish waters, they recommend anglers think twice before taking any quantity of those rated 3 or 4 without recommending an ‘open-season’ on 2.

Looking down the list you may well think you’ll catch very few that are ‘table-sized’ and none rated as ‘1′ - this is very much a reflection of the state of the fish stocks.

A good reason why you should support SSACN and the efforts of other conservation minded organisations.

Sources :: SFSA, SWSFSA, cefas.org, defra.gov.uk, fao.org, fishbase.org, wikipedia.org, members and contributors to SSACN.