An unfortunate incident took place on Black Rock Beach during the recent spell of fine weather.

Like many families, we collected our children from school and headed straight for the sea. On this particular day, the beach was crowded and a great many people were in the water swimming, surfing, strolling. In the middle of the throng, but quite apart from it, were three middle aged men standing by the water's edge indiscriminately casting fishing hooks from rods.

On a couple of occasions I urged children to get out of the path of these missiles as something in the fishermen's demeanour suggested that they would brook no curtailment of their chosen pastime.

My wife, however, is made of sterner stuff and when she observed one of the fellows preparing to sling his hook into an area of the sea densely populated with cavorting youngsters, she waded in with an appeal: "Hold on, there are children in front of you. Why can't you go to the far end where it is quieter?" "How much of the beach do you want?" replied this gentleman angler, surely not a local.

I do not believe that these men had malicious intent, they just wanted to fish a communal stretch of beach and felt that they had as much right to be there as anyone else.

The moral position is clear but what are the rules in regard to this issue? One solution would be simply to ban fishing from the beach altogether but that would be to the detriment of all the other fishermen who do so responsibly and without putting other people in danger.

I should be interested to learn of other people's views on this subject.

Marhamchurch.