Bait - What are you paying?

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 10:14 am

Local tackle shop has just put rag up to £12/pound (from £9/pound). That is a 33% increase and I told them to get stuffed as I know another tackle shop a few miles away which is only charging £9.60 this year. My mate and I have pretty well decided that we aint buying any more bait except frozen squid which is well cheap. Fortunately, we can get all the lug we need in a few minutes digging, we know a great spot for softback crab and we can get loads of slipper limpet off the beach after a good blow (great bait for bass). Maybe we should get a big freezer and go into business to supply some of you gents at sensible prices?......

Guest

Heres a list of average prices for bait in Southend.
Lug £2.50 a Score
King rag £2.00 for 6
Packet of Rag about 20 small £2.50
Peeler Crab 60p per crab
Soft Crabs 40p per crab
1lb box of squid £2.00
1lb off Frozen Mackerel about £1.50

Joined: Dec 11, 2005 Posts: 3 Location: purbrook hampshire

HI Eccles,Any chance off letting me know where you get the rag at £9.60 Im not far from you .(Purbrook) cheers John.

Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 4:18 pm

Answer for jr: Yes. in my favourite tackle shop (wish I still lived there) - Solent Tackle in Winter Road, Pompey. Don't know whether you call it Eastney or Milton cos it's half way between the two. He had an absolute bargain there the other day, nearly bought it: A Ron Thompson Zensorflex Rod Combo for only £35 -unbelievable but true.

Guest

£9.60 a pound for rag in these parts would be lovely. You are looking at paying £14.00 a pound and £15.00 for 100 lugworm. Rag has always been cheap in the Solent area and I'm wondering if that's because they are available in huge quantities. I used to stay with friends in Titchfield Common and went digging at Hill Head. The size of the common rag was amazing(almost as big as kings) and they were easy to dig. I know a few diggers and they earn every penny. The diggers down your way Eccles must be earning a pittance if the shops are only charging such a small amount of money, unless they are using bait as a lost leader to get people into the shop.

Guest

top sports at withernsea is £13 for a pound of rag or lug but the rag are realy big at the mo the lug are a bit small but big enough for me squid is £2.20 for a pack

Occasional Joined: Oct 11, 2006 Posts: 120

i went fishing the other day and got 1/2pound of medium size rag and 1/lbblock of squid for 6.95 from lockstock and tackle in southsea :lol:

Regular Joined: Jan 13, 2005 Posts: 449 Location: Norfolk

Lug seems to be about £18.00 a hundred in Norfolk from what I can make out. Glad I dig me own. I have seen no prices for rag. Have seen peeler prices last year of between 60 and eighty pence each for fresh ones. Again, I am glad I bought a stash of Essex peelers with me when I moved. Wasn't sure whether Norfolk fish go for Essex peelers or not. happy

Guest

eccles wrote:

Local tackle shop has just put rag up to £12/pound (from £9/pound)

I used to be a digger...packed it in about 7 years ago. At that time I charged £10 /lb and was by no means the most expensive. I could have sold double what I was able to dig as well. Think yourself lucky that you can get it so reasonably priced.....and bear in mind that the increase is probably out of the shopkeepers control. The few shops that I used to deal with simply sold bait to bring customers into the shop and made little or no profit from it.

There could be a lot of other reasons behind the increase, such as one particular digger packing in, or a local worm bed becoming dug out, did you ask the shop the reason for the price increase eccles?

Guest

blakdog wrote:

eccles wrote:

Local tackle shop has just put rag up to £12/pound (from £9/pound)

I used to be a digger...packed it in about 7 years ago. At that time I charged £10 /lb and was by no means the most expensive. I could have sold double what I was able to dig as well. Think yourself lucky that you can get it so reasonably priced.....and bear in mind that the increase is probably out of the shopkeepers control. The few shops that I used to deal with simply sold bait to bring customers into the shop and made little or no profit from it.

There could be a lot of other reasons behind the increase, such as one particular digger packing in, or a local worm bed becoming dug out, did you ask the shop the reason for the price increase eccles?

I bought Lug for £13.50 per 100, on Saturday for Orford, in Southend. Also got small 50 white rag as well for £8.00, but they were tiny, but the shop owner did warn me when I ordered, so no complaints there, mackerel and squid, frozen were reasonbale prices as well. Don't know if I am allowed to mention the name of the shop on this site.

They also do home delivery, guaranteed next day, but it is expensive at £8.00.

Guest

I was thinking of digging my own bait untill I read somewhere that I have to pay my local council £5 a year for the privilage. I know its only £5 but its the princaple of it!!

I have found a web site quoting:

Landowners’ rights

The rights of foreshore owners with regard to the collection of shoreline species are complex, and have still not fully been tested under case law. The ‘natural products’ found on the seashore belong to the owner of the shore, but not the ‘sea fish’ found there. The public may exercise common law rights (bait collection for personal use and collection of ‘sea fish’) over the foreshore without landowners’ permission. Exceptions occur where there are ancient proprietary rights associated with the ownership of coastal land over, e.g., adjacent shellfisheries (this most commonly occurs in estuaries or other inlets) or where fisheries are private as a result of a pre-Magna Carta grant in England.

So if I were to bait dig and some "inspector" finds me and fines me £60!!!
could this stand up??

Power to the people! :lol:

Sweed

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:30 am

We already covered this topic not so long ago.
At Southend, providing you are outside the quarter mile boundry they cannot enforce any charge for bait digging.
It is an ancillary of fishing ( House Of Lords Ruling ) and thus a right of the common people to do so under the Magna Carta

Guest

Sweedishtaff wrote:

I was thinking of digging my own bait untill I read somewhere that I have to pay my local council £5 a year for the privilage. I know its only £5 but its the princaple of it!!

Sweed

Considering that in most pubs you couldn't buy 2 pints of beer for a fiver, actually i don't think the charge is unreasonable......but I do get the point about having to pay.

Generally, so long as you can get to the foreshore via a public right of way or footpath and there are no 'special rights' on the land, then as the peice you found on the internet states, you have rights under Magna Carta. The trouble with this area of the law is that there have been what a barrister described to me as obsurd decisions by judges, where the judge seems to completely go against the law and this causes a bit of a mess from the legal perspective.

To put all this into perspective though, I dug between 5 and 7 days a week for a number of years as a professional and have dug my own bait for over 30 years and have only ever had problems once....on that occasion the owners of the foreshore knew they couldn't stop people digging so they tried to prevent access by blocking the public footpath and were put in their place very quickly by the Rambler's Association.

Guest

Just to clarify a few things, I am waiting a response from the legal department from southed borough council regarding this issue.

For those of you who may not be aware of the legalities please read this following statement:

The judges also held "that a public right to take worms from the foreshore is recognized by the common law and may be properly be described as ancillary to the public right to fish. ... But it does not follow that the right is unrestricted or that it may be exercised by any member of the public at any time or place ... This means that in our judgment, that the taking of worms must be directly related to an actual or intended exercise of the public right to fish. Taking for commercial purposes such as sale clearly is not justified in this way. ...The rule, as we would state it, is that bait-digging on the foreshore is justified by the public right to take fish, when the bait is taken on or on behalf of persons who require it for use in the exercise of that right." This judgment caused a temporary increase in bait digging activity at Budle Bay, Lindisfarne NNR, where one of the original NNR byelaw's was nullified by the judgment (see above).

Finally, the court concluded that the Alnwick byelaw's were regulatory, not prohibitive, because Boulmer Haven was only a limited area, a small part of the foreshore within the local authority area, and an even smaller part of the Northumbrian foreshore. Although the area affected was larger than fishermen would like, it did not "prohibit them obtaining worms reasonably close by". These judgments are summarized in Evans, L.J. and Macpherson of Cluny J. (1993).

Please don't take me the wrong way, I agree that commercial bait diggers should need some form of license, before you have a go What I mean is:

If a person want to bait dig solely for his own use (no commercial gain) then that should be okay. But if a bait digger sells what he finds then that is different. (Hang on I have just re-read this and this sounds like a tax!!!!)

Maybe the council should go about this in a different way by instead of trying to enforce a law that doesn't exist, they should train local bait diggers in the correct way of digging for worms, therefore not damaging the local wildlife or marine life and to backfill any holes made.

Please do not take this the wrong way I am not trying to have a dig I just think that the councils will think of anyway to get money from us......

Who know maybe window tax will come into effect soon....

Sweed

After posting I have found this :

2.3 Legal status
Species collected from UK waters may, in legal terms, be divided into ‘sea fish’ and other
species.
Sea fish are species that are made subject to fisheries legislation. This definition includes only
fish, crustacea and molluscs (the latter two are referred to as ‘shellfish’). There is a public right
to collect these species for commercial sale and for personal use from public sea fisheries
throughout the UK, subject to legislative controls (including Several and Regulating Orders).
Sea fish may be used for bait or for food. As far as the legislation is concerned, the end use is
irrelevant.
Species that are not sea fish include marine worms that are often used as bait. These and certain
other species do not form part of the public sea fisheries in the UK. Their collection is not
regulated by fisheries legislation or by any other statute, but there is no public right to collect
these species other than for personal use as bait. In other words, this collection must be in order
to provide bait for a fishing activity and not for resale. Bait worms may only be taken
commercially with the permission of the landowner (with a few exceptions where customary or
private rights exist, discussed in more detail in Chapter 4). The situation with regard to the
collection of other ‘non-sea fish’ species such as echinoderms, tunicates and seaweeds has not
been tested in UK case law, and is outside the scope of this study.

Guest

The Southend-on-Sea
Corporation Act (1895)

· Enables the Borough of Southend-on-Sea to limit
baitdigging to areas seaward of a quarter mile
limit from the seawall and certain hardways
beyond this distance. The byelaw was enacted
because of the public nuisance and potential
danger caused by holes left by baitdiggers.

· Numerous successful prosecutions had
been made and an injunction obtained
against one persistent offender, who was
reportedly imprisoned (Fowler 1992).