Papamoa's beach fishers have stirred the Tauranga City Council into action over the use of vehicles on the remote eastern Papamoa Beach.

Fishers who use quad bikes to access the Kaituna Cut have been paying a $30 a year registration fee to the Tauranga City Council.

In a petition received by the council's projects and monitoring committee on Monday, the recreational fishers complain they are outnumbered by illegal beach users, and they want the council to do something about it.

The fishers are asking why they should bother registering when it appears to make no difference.

Their registration gives them a number and permission to use the beach to access the western side of the cut, which is achieved by driving about 6km along the beach from Karewa Parade.

The fishers say that over the last year more and more unregistered people are using the beach.

Large four wheel drive utes are driving from the boat ramp to the river mouth.

Two wheel bikes are racing through the adjacent sand dunes, and only about a quarter of the quad bikes turning up at the river mouth are registered.

'The people who go to the trouble of registering their bikes have no objections to the fee if it is policed,” say petitioners.

Their concern is that without policing or control there will be a serious accident on the beach, with the law abiding fishermen losing their access privilege as a result.

'We've done some monitoring, but the problem is the fishermen fish through the day, round the clock,” says bylaws officer Brian Jupp.

'They come and go as they please – we can only be in one place at a time.”

People are using the remote stretch of beach for all sorts of activities besides fishing, says Brian.

'Farmers bring their farm bikes over from Waikato and let their children ride them.

'We get people who want to run commercial tours, but we have said ‘no' to commercial activities.”

Policing beach activities is difficult because access depends on weather and tides.

They have tried to arrange police assistance, but the police quite often have something more important to do, says Brian.

They could stand by the beach access all day and not see anyone on the beach.

'We just don't know when they are on the beach,” says Brian.

A motion by Councillor Murray Guy that the registration fee be dropped was lost.

A suggestion by Councillor Bill Faulkner to empower the legal fishers as beach wardens was not supported by Mayor Stuart Crosby who says as a former poacher turned game keeper for the former Papamoa Community Board he couldn't recommend it.

'If you want to be abused up hill and down dale – it is not a place to put any member of the public,” says Stuart.

Councillors decided a direction to staff to police the situation will do for now.