Do you take your grandchildren fishing?

I'm glad to say my two prefer being on the river (in canoes) rather than sitting by it waiting for a poor unsuspecting fish to come along.

DS1 takes his DS fishing occasionally and sea fishing if they're at the seaside. DS2 takes his two kayaking.

DH takes DGS3 (13) fishing quite regularly and DS takes his son (10) whenever they can find the time.

All our grandchildren have been fishing but two grandsons are particularly keen.

I will try and encourage my GS's as they get older as I love being on the bankside. The sad thing is times have changed and I really think that some youngsters would only venture out fishing if there was an electric hook-up for x-box iPods etc on the bank!! Tight Lines!

My two don"t seem that keen , i remember the story of the boys fishing and the one turned to his chum and remarked

"IT ain"t much fun fishing if you don"t catch anything . I laughed .

Teaching children to kill living things? I don't think so!

I'm fascinated by fly fishing. I eat very little meat but do eat a lot of fish, so I've got no problems with people fishing for them. I'm wondering, is it still something that just men do or do more women fish these days?

Coarse fishing involves releasing the fish so children learn to handle them carefully.......unless it's game fish which are caught for the pot!

Tegan I don't see many women fishing on my travels,a few,but not many.

We live by the sea and at this time of the year the mackerel are chasing the sprats and many of them actually end up being beached. My son and husband were out fishing (until 3am in the case of my son!) last week and caught 5 mackerel which we ate for dinner the following day. When my grandson is of an age to join in no doubt he'll follow in his grandfather's footsteps.

My grandson is fishing in my water feature as we speak write. He has a stick to which he has attached a piece if string and baited it with the remnants of his sausage roll. He's happy and blissfully unaware there is nothing to catch.

AKA, aren"t they just so adorable ?

Could kiss them to bits !!

True Nonu. Forgot to mention he's stark naked too!

Except for factor 50 and a hat

Laugh !!

@grannyactivist - That's the only kind of fishing I have ever done - hauling up mackerel on feathered hooks, particularly when you can see the sprats and know the mackerel are after them. And I was broke and hungry at the time, which made it doubly pleasurable, in an atavistic sort of way...

'Sport' fishing - well I have this nagging feeling that people are just trying to show they are more clever than a fish...

...no competition there then feetle

feetlebaum I read that as the only kind of fishing you have ever done was naked except for sunscreen and a hat!

Have had another tweet from @MrCrabtree:
"We are looking at doing some research into attitudes on fishing and why people do or don't do it, I shall be in touch again!"

I write as the owner of the fishing rights for approx 200 yards of a small river in East Anglia. Our house and garden are on one side of the river and on the opposite bank there is a public footpath on the land we own. For the first 8 years that we owned the fishing rights I cleared up after many grown up men who would sit for several hours fishing and enjoying their various snacks and drinks before driving home. The rule of thumb was a carrier bag full of rubbish collected every day during the fishing season.

Then one hot summer's evening I found a carrier bag tied with fishing line about 10 feet up a tree. DH retrieved the bag which contained the guts, bones etc of a fish which had been caught and killed which does not adhere to the rules of coarse fishing. I had had enough of the rubbish, the use of my land as a toilet by fishermen, the nights disturbed by fishermen shouting to each other what they had caught so I phoned our solicitor and asked him to check the deeds and advise me of MY rights.

How things have changed as we have enforced a NO FISHING policy on our land. Yes I have been threatened, sworn at and called all sorts of things. In addition the police have been called and fishermen who refused to leave have been removed. Two of our local police officers are keen fishermen and will not tolerate any nuisance. The Environment Agency river bailiff is helpful too - he likes to check the fishing licences are up to date!

But I will let children and teenagers fish in order to encourage them to the sport. I am always polite but firm with my requests for fishermen to leave and I find the majority of them are reasonable and understand my point of view.