Give Fish A Chance
SSACN’s Give Fish A Chance (GFAC) initiative reflects the fact that many anglers, whilst enjoying their sport and occasionally taking a fish for the table, are keen to do what they can to ensure the minimal impact to the environment and to the fish themselves.
Give Fish A Chance consists of a series of advisory notes and voluntary measures aimed at helping an angler to better understand the issues associated with catch and release as well as how to handle fish - especially when tagging or recording tagging data.
A major component of the initiative is the GFAC Table which for each species gives the size a fish must reach before an angler may be reasonably sure it has had a chance to breed - by adopting these sizes as a ‘minimum landing size’ an angler is doing their bit to help ensure the continuity of that species.
The GFAC Table | |
GFAC table web page PDF Download |
SSACN’s voluntary measure for anglers wishing to do their bit to help ensure the future of a species by only taking fish which have had at least one chance to breed - pdf. |
Handling Fish | |
Catch and release PDF Download |
SSACN simplified catch and release web page |
Tope - best practice | The SOS ‘handbook’ on the best practice for handling tope. The basic principles will easily translate to fishing for other similar species - pdf. |
Spurdog - best practice | Enjoy fishing for spurdog but most importantly cause the minimum of damage to any you encounter - web page. |
Tagging | |
Spurdog plastic dart tagging guidelines | Whilst spurdog may look big and tough creatures they are actually quite delicate, it is necessary to return them with the minimum of fuss and distress. |
Reporting a recapture | The UK Shark Tagging Programme offer a reward for reporting recaptures as tagging programmes produce valuable data. Most importantly - Do not remove the tag. |
As with all our other pages we are open to receiving original works for topics we haven’t got covered, updates and/or corrections to any we have and requests for any you feel could be of help - all you have to do is email us at contact@ssacn.org.