The death of the swan that swallowed a fishing hook at the Adenauer Weiher in Cologne has left many people sad and dismayed. Since then, the local anglers have been met with some downright hatred.
The hostility is particularly massive on Facebook. The shocking climax: two men showed up at the business address of the Cologne Fishing and Water Protection Association (CAG), which is active at the Adenauer Weiher, threatened the treasurer’s family and threatened to put fishing hooks in their dogs’ food!
“We as a club are very worried,” explained Kristian Wilhelm (42), the club’s first chairman, to EXPRESS.de on Wednesday (June 5, 2024). The father of two small children is also afraid for his family. For days he has been receiving aggressive emails, including to his private email address, with accusations and insults about what cruel people they are.
“On Facebook, people were calling for people to throw stones at us anglers, calling us drunks, antisocial, and saying that our children should be rammed with fishing hooks,” he says. The alleged and so-called nature conservation is clearly overstepping boundaries here.
The father of the family admits that he jumps when the doorbell rings. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else,” he says. The association has since deleted its business address, which is the treasurer’s private address, from its website and has acquired a post office box.
The club is also worried about its large youth group of around 30 young people between the ages of seven and 17. Kristian Wilhelm: “We’re wondering whether we can still go fishing with them at the pond.”
The association has been the leaseholder of almost all of Cologne’s ponds for decades, has not had any problems so far and also has good contact with the pond sponsors. “We know the problem with the water birds,” says the 42-year-old. They have already adapted their rules and set up no-fishing zones. Fishing hooks should not be torn off, for example by dead wood, but it could happen.
“It’s not that we’re happy when a swan dies. Quite the opposite. We go fishing because we’re interested in nature. We’re far from injuring animals for no reason,” Kristian Wilhelm explains.
The club tries to use waders to remove fishing rubbish and broken rigs from the water. “But that doesn’t always work,” he says. Then it can happen that a water bird finds and eats a broken hook with bait still on it. For example, corn, which is used to bait carp.
“Our club has had the same number of members for about 20 years – but such incidents are only happening now, when there are so many water birds,” explains Wilhelm. Especially when it comes to invasive species such as Egyptian and Canada geese.
They have also been accused of throwing caught fish back into the water, thus subjecting them to unnecessary suffering. The 42-year-old added: “Yes, we deliberately release fish when we cannot use them. I don’t kill fish that I can’t eat.”
They also have a conservation mandate, explains Kristian Wilhelm. Every year he has to keep a so-called catch statistic, in which every fish species caught has to be recorded, including the number and weight. “We know the invasive fish species and try to reduce them,” he explains.
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The original of this article “Swan swallows hook – this triggers a terrible wave of hatred against Cologne fishing club” comes from Express.de.
