Fishermans tale’s

A mate of mine called the other day to say at long last after years of patiently fishing on many riverbanks and beaches, catching absolutely nothing but hypothermia he had just seen his first wild otter. The inevitable fisherman’s tales followed, “it was this lang”, he said (with arms spread wider than the room) “and that was just the hook I used to catch it”. To be fair he is a good angler and not as prone to exaggeration as many are and having been one for over thirty years I know quite a few.

He reckoned it stole his flatfish off his hook of which he was ecstatic about, the whole experience had been a wonderful once in a life time chance encounter where the otter showed exactly who was the better fisherman. I have fished for many years in wide circles and know many anglers whose feelings toward the king of the flood are just as reverential but my mate also pointed out a recent TV and press article that he was very concerned with, a very well know TV angling personality was calling for a cull of otters.

My mate rightly asked me questions about an otters life, me being ‘otterly mad’ (sorry!) and he went away happy, as most do with his ‘otter encounter’, but I could not stop thinking about the article. Watching it and reading the so called evidence really got me going and for someone so well known to publically state such things was beyond me.

The alleged angling presenter

So for the record Mr Wilson, I can put an equal amount of experience with otters as I have with angling, together that’s somewhere near a combined total of eighty years (god I makes me sound old), so I might make a little sense.


Otters eat fish! Mostly anyway, supplemented by rodents, rabbits, birds, frogs, anything really they can catch. Most of the otters in Britain originated from wild stock, dispersing naturally through careful habitat management and enhancement, plus huge improvements in water quality which incidently also improved fish stocks. Just over one hundred otters were ‘reintroduced’ into south eastern England up until 1999, No otters have been ‘reintroduced in the northeast of England, ever! The otters here in the northeast got there by themselves because of four legs, good habitat, water quality and fish numbers. Of this we should be justly proud and I am too for having my small part to play in this success.

Now much of this storey centres on southern England and commercial fisheries where, yes I can see there being an issue, but even here the mistruths are rife. If I opened a shop in Sunderland with no front door on I would expect there to be no goods there the following day, similarly if you dig a hole fill it full of fish and do nothing to protect them is asking for trouble, the same thing is often true for garden ponds you can protect them to from herons etc. yet when an otter turns up it is someone else’s fault.

I have fished the region’s rivers and mant more across the country for nearly 40 years and in that time my experiences and enrichment like the quality of the fishing has increased along with the presence of otter. It is no coincidence that what is good for us and fishing is good for otters too. I want to share my life and river with a creature as beautiful as an otter, I’m not sure about the latter with me mind.

A barbaric practice well lost in the mists of time

It was quite ironic that I also received a timely reminder of days gone by this week when someone sent me some photos of otter hunting in Northumberland at the turn of the last century. They are wonderful images of a bygone era and a pursuit that has long since pasted into the realms of history, which is where it should rightly stay.

There is no place in our modern society for a cull of any of our native creatures despite the length of some fisherman’s tales.