We hope you and your families are well and keeping safe during these challenging times.
Following the Government’s recent announcement about everyone needing to stay at home unless for essential reasons, we have asked the Premier’s Office to clarify how this new advice applies to recreational fishing.
This morning we received the following statement directly from the Premier’s Office:
“To protect our community and reduce the spread of COVID-19, we’ve introduced restrictions that limit both indoor and outdoor non-work gatherings to two persons only. Western Australians should follow four simple guidelines. That is, everyone should be staying home unless for:
- shopping for what you need – like food or necessary supplies;
- medical or health care needs, including compassionate requirements;
- exercise, in compliance with the public gathering requirements; and
- work or study, if you can’t work or learn remotely.
“We urge all Western Australians to practice common-sense and cease non-essential activity. Where possible, we encourage recreational fishers to stay home for now. We thank all Western Australians for their understanding during this time.” WA Premier’s Office
These are exceptional times, in WA we are in a Declared State of Emergency and we all need to pull together and play a role to get through this to the other side, when fishing will be more important than ever in boosting people’s mental health and wellbeing, as well as the regional and State economies.
Recfishwest understands people wanting to go fishing at what is a very challenging time for the benefit of their mental health and wellbeing and to get a feed for their family – and it’s not our role to tell people what they can or can’t do. However, this advice is very clear – you should stay in your homes to protect yourself against infection from COVID-19 and from potentially spreading the disease unless for essential activities.
Pulling together to get through to the other side
So, we advise recfishers to think very carefully if it is essential for you to go fishing and to be safe and be responsible for your own wellbeing, your families’ and that of the community as a whole.
We encourage recfishers to use this time to prepare and plan for their fishing trips when we are all able to wet a line once again. Use the time to stock up on those bits of gear in preparation for when you can fish again – and make sure you buy your fishing gear from your local tackle suppliers (online or give them a call), they’re doing it really tough now and consider retaining any charter fishing bookings for the future to help support the charter industry.
Start planning future family and fishing holidays in the regions – they will need every domestic tourism dollar they can get once we can all get up and running again after this crisis.
The sooner we can pull through this together as a community the sooner we can all get back out there fishing.