Ban live-bait fishing

For the first time in France, our organisation is revealing footage of this practice (taken in Paris and in the south of France).

WHAT IS LIVE-BAIT FISHING ?

This fishing method consists in piercing the back or mouth of a vertebrate animal (most commonly fish) with a hook in order to attract a carnivorous fish. The fish that is impaled alive can suffer for hours and it will panic with no way to escape as the predator closes in.

In addition to that ordeal, the live bait and the predator are then both brutally extracted from the water as in all types of fishing. This extraction from their environment causes suffocation which terrifies them.

Live-bait fishing allows to catch several species of fish among which are pike, black bass, sheatfish, perch, pike-perch… The fish used as bait are usually very young fish: gudgeon, bleak, chub, tench. Bigger baits are also used to catch sheatfish.

THE SUFFERING OF FISH USED AS BAIT

Fish used as bait can originate from fish farms and be sold or can be caught beforehand by anglers. In any case, their ordeal begins long before the actual fishing session. We have revealed shocking footage from some Decathlon stores: aquariums are dirty, overpopulated, the dead float among the living. Some fish are even kept in plastic bags before being sold. After being caught, or bought in a store, they are kept alive in buckets in a small amount of water for several hours or even several days. These conditions cause pain and stress to the fish (see footage).

Fish are sentient beings. The state of scientific knowledge establishes that fish have the ability to suffer, to feel a wide variety of emotions and that they possess complex social lives.

However, in France, there exists no regulations aimed at lowering the suffering experienced by fish (be it in recreational or commercial fishing).

Learn more about the ability of fish to feel pain.  

Take action by sending a message to Decathlon => click here. 

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

The fish that are used as live baits can come from a different water body than the one where the fishing is taking place (if they originate from fish farms or if they were caught elsewhere). This can cause health issues (spreading of viruses, parasites, bacteria…). The poor conditions in which they are kept before being used increase that risk: it is known that stress affects the immune system of fish and that overpopulation helps the spread of diseases. 

Live-bait fishing can also be connected to the spread of invasive species.

Learn more about environmental issues related to live-bait fishing.

FIGHT COMMON PRECONCEPTIONS SURROUNDING LIVE-BAIT FISHING

Our organisation has mandated an IFOP study on live-bait fishing that allowed us to break down common preconceptions surrounding this practice. Live-bait fishing is neither “ageing”, nor “rural”, and even less “marginal”. Close to one angler in two uses it (regardless of frequency). Those anglers belong to all generations and come from all over France. It is even practised slightly more around Paris. 

Those numbers go against the common statements from fishing federations that tend to minimise the extent to which this method is used, leading one to think it is disappearing on its own.

We can therefore assure that live-bait fishing is not a marginal practice on the verge of dying out. We must ban it if we really want to take into account the interests of fish and spare them from the worst of the suffering.

To read the IFOP study, click here.

WE ASK FOR THE BAN OF LIVE-BAIT FISHING

This archaic and cruel practice no longer has its place in our society.
For that matter, Germany, Austria (in the major part of the Länder), Scotland, Ireland (in fresh water) and Switzerland have already banned it.
We ask for it to be banned in France, that is to say a ban on the use of live vertebrate animals as bait.

Take up action by signing our petition => click here.