Archive for August, 2009

Aug 20 2009

1st PGFA Saltwater Angling Seminar

Published by Ali Saeed under PGFA News

Mazhar’s Tackle shop in keamari was the scene of a highly successful informal seminar on saltwater angling on the evening of wednesday the 19th of August.

20-25 new anglers took part in an interactive and informative seminar on basic to intermediete level concepts of saltwater angling.

After a brief introduction to the PGFA and its objectives, each new angler was invited to share his present experience of angling and what his aims are for the future. Once familiar with our audience, the discussion moved towards a host of pre-arranged topics meant to deal with all the fundamentals of the sport in a logical order.

Topics covered included:

  • Bait fishing
  • Trolling
  • Casting (with a brief reference to jigging)
  • Tackle and terminal tackle
  • Drag and its caliberation
  • Reading the water - tides, moon phase, weather,
  • Where to fish
  • Species wise information
  • Safety

Given the immensity of these topics those areas which the audience by popular demand showed the most interest in were given more time.

A rich tapestry of experienced anglers were present to comment and explain each topic and this way a variety of opinions were shared with what has to be

described as an excellent and eager to learn audience. It was this combination of experience and new enthusiasm that gave the meeting a special quality which

no one person speaking alone could possibly achieve. This sort of collaboration to enhance participation in the sport is the very embodiment of the PGFA way.

Since all anglers love to talk, the idea was to put all this chatter to useful purpose and give some direction to an excellent group of new anglers.

The fact that four hours flew by without any participant budging from thier seats itself showed the success of the event and by popular demand as soon as

info@pgfa.org recieves enough requests for another seminar team PGFA will be ready to arrange it.

Photos Here

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PGFA/photos/album/695475990/pic/list

Regards,

Team PGFA

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Aug 13 2009

PGFA/Energile Inshore Fishing Championship 2008

Published by Ali Saeed under PGFA News, Sport Fishing, Trolling

One response so far

Aug 05 2009

Catch and Release

Published by Ali Saeed under Carp Fishing

I am being sitting here in Karachi with less knowledge of freshwater water fishing around Punjab often judge the ambiguity in words and actions of most of freshwater anglers, it’s not uncommon now to read the word “release” in the majority of freshwater reports but in reality when one go look into the videos and pictures of catches at FlickR, Facebook etc. it Cleary visible much more killing then what stated by members in reports, The idea of writing this message pops-in my mind after reading a detailed message by fellow angler Hammad Q (Thank you).

We have Catla, Common, Grass, Mrigal, Rohu, Malli, Singhara, Mahseer and Snakehead in our water out of them Catla, Mrigal, Mahseer and few more are quite rare to catch, this lefts Common, Grass, Malli, Singhara, Tilapia and Snakehead in plenty which we can catch all year round with almost no bag limit by PGFA so far and I don’t see any need to talk about releasing them in start while we are still in early phase of building the “catch and release” culture in Pakistan.

Now our native species which we really have to care are Rohu and Mahseer, especially when they are breeding in monsoon, Their “mating system” is very very fragile as it requires them to move up streams where they need fast flowing currents to spawn and little like salmon females of Rohu, Mori, Thela, Mahseer  etc lays eggs and male fertilize them by spraying the sperms. It makes this behavior nearly Pair-bonding all within structured and calculated process developed in thousands of years.

This makes these species an easy target when they move upstream from inlets, thanks god we have few main streams still left where we don’t have bunds/dams moreover it’s quite contrary though but most of the “thekaydar” stop fishing in these areas to let the fish spwan but this still left anglers and handliners allowed to fish with no bag limits what so ever?

We can clearly see the trends of fishing since last three years in PGFA’s reports specially in breeding time when angler visibly move close to these inlets and relentlessly kill whatever they catch. I being a member of PGFA urge these anglers to please stop killing Rohu and Mahseer.

For information both the rohu and Mahseer maturity length is 16” and 19” in that order so we at least need to give them a change before we kill them in addition the bigger the fish is the better the number of eggs it will lay in carps.

Next time before killing an immature Mahseer or Rohu, give it a second though and take a photo instead and release back to help this specie survive. Rohu is almost extinct close to the Indus outlet in Sindh and if we continue killing them ruthlessly it will be vanished in few years from all the main Indus streams and reservoirs exists in Punjab like already depleted Mahseer we can see.

Even Qurbani is prohibited of expectant cow???? Then why can’t we stop killing of fish full of eggs? its happening all around we can see many examples from killing of Barracuda/grouper by spear fishing around Churna/Chuta churna to catching Mahseer and Rohu by anglers in breeding season around inlests.
To me it’s a sin as well as Unethical Angling, we at PGFA will officially take actions in coming time and will ban such members.

Help us protecting these freshwater species.

Ali Saeed

2 responses so far