Mackay Bridge Angling Club All Clubs Light Tackle Boat Competition has introduced catch and release fishing methods in their competitions to ensure sustainable fishing.
Mackay Bridge Angling Club All Clubs Light Tackle Boat Competition has introduced catch and release fishing methods in their competitions to ensure sustainable fishing.
The Eastern Cape boasts 800km of coastline and numerous inland water bodies providing great opportunities for fisheries. The Eastern Cape is also the most rural and poorest province in South Africa with many citizens living along the coastline and depending on natural resources for subsistence.
Therefore there is a dire need to retain fish stocks, not only for utilitarianism reasons, but also for sustainable purposes says the chairman of the Mackay Bridge Angling Club, Chris Tye.
The Mackay Bridge Angling Club, based in Colchester in the Eastern Cape, hosts an annual fishing competition, the All Clubs Light Tackle Boat Competition. The competition takes place over a weekend in August each year and traditionally entailed a weekend-long fishing expedition where winners were judged by the weight of their catch, which included heaviest fish and heaviest bag of fish.
But four years ago, when a team of researchers from the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) in Grahamstown were on a field trip at the Sunday's River Estuary, the club’s anglers were exposed to catch and release fishing.
SAIAB’s Principal Aquatic Biologist, Dr Paul Cowley got involved in the competition in 2006 when he was asked to give a talk on sustainable fishing and introduced anglers to the catch and release technique. The following year, in 2007, the competition started changing its format. “I have been the chairman for fours years now and realised that the need to bring everything to the scale is no longer valid since we are facing sustainability issues,” says Tye.
He says the change in format of the competition was well-received by participants and created much needed awareness around fishing in a sustainable manner. Cowley admits however that in the beginning anglers were still too competitive, “one guy already had four fish on a string and then only called the research team over to tag his fish and obviously the fish were not healthy enough to be tagged so were not considered for the competition.”
Cowley and his research team are on site to ensure that all released fish are are healthy. The first 25 fish to be caught and successfully released are awarded prizes. If previously released fish are caught again, the angler is awarded R2500, however, this prize remains to be claimed said Tye.
Tye was very pleased with the turnout for this year’s competition which drew 235 anglers and 100 boats. According to Tye, the drawcard for this competition is the fact that it is appealing to both the sponsor and the angler who want to be associated with conservation activities.
The competition has therefore managed to attract generous sponsors such as Proservices, African Skiff Marine, Colchester Spar, Kretzmarine, Andrè Koen Motors, Addo Affrique Estate, MDB Switchboards and Coega Leisure.
