Demise of spurdog

A friend showed me a picture there recently of him sitting in a wooden punt having just caught a spurdog of around 6 pounds. This was in the 80's and he said that they used to be pestered by the things and often had to move the boat to get away from them. Now the area he was fishing in is a place I have regularly fishing for the past 4 years for ray & dogfish and its only about 5 fathoms deep on a sandy bottom. Before seeing the picture if you had told me u used to catch spurdog there I would have laughed at ya.

It became apparent to me that during the 80's spurdog populations must have been so healthy that they were spreading into shallow areas like this. Seemingly mid 80's a big spurdog fishery started all around Donegal and other parts of the west and the trawlers fished that hard that they caused population to collapse. Awful bloody waste :evil:

true, since then though they were making a real good comeback the last few years in ballycastle with fish that were pushing record size, then the longliners landed just over a year ago and done big damage to spurs, skate and ray catches since, even numbers of lsds are down! :evil:

It would be great to see them come back up to the numbers they used to be. Still its got to the stage where the angling skippers down here tend to stay quiet if they come across them as the commercial boys would be at trawling the s*** out of em straight away. Sounds like the population, Phil, is a bit healthier around Ballycastle.

Pete

its ok, but well down on previous years, same problem as you mentioned, i think when the commercial boys got wind of the number of spurs and blondes being caught in the area they came and lined it and destroyed the local population, which is hopefully improving again soon.

Typical :evil:

[Drew]

When you heard the amount of hooks that b*****d shot last year around Rathlin, and the Rathlin Sound it would have made any self respecting Angler Vomit! :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :!: :!: :!: :evil: :evil: :evil: :!: :!: :!: :x :x :evil: :evil:

Last edited by Drew on Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

it,s a sad fact that the commercial men dont give a toss for the angler only there own pockets ,these people cant seem to see any further than the end of there own noses and if they keep going the way they are there will be NOTHING left for anyone of ANY KIND.the damage that they are doing will take a hell of a long time to repair but do they care about there future I THINK NOT,THESE PEOPLE DISCUST ME WITH THERE WE HAVE TO MAKE A LIVING SPEECH.

Some of you older lot up north might remember the great spurdog fishing in Belfast lough and the R.N.L.I. dogfish competition in the early 80'S. Lots of specimens each year, mostly taken off Grey Point in Helen's Bay and further down off Holywood. We even caught them in darkness off the end of the old North Pier in Bangor when we couldnt see the floats for the mackeral.
Apparently the local trawler owned by a Bangor skipper just cleaned the whole lot out one year and they never resurfaced. Also around this time saw the decline of the superb thornback fishing off Ballymac point (between Ballyholme and Groomsport) but the spurs above anything else just seemed to totally disappear.

And that's why Belfast Lough is a Barren wasteland full of Mini Whiting.

if the lough is full of mini whiting, and still gets a good run of herring in season then it 'should' be full of other predators like the spurdogs feeding on them??? the lough also used to throw up hake and anglerfish etc, wonder if they are still there but perhaps in areas of the lough not really fished?? theres bound to be more than mini whiting around, theyd be too easy a food source for the bigger predators to give a miss surely???...

the fact that there are so many small whiting means there is nothing there to keep there numbers under control so probably no predators feeding on them to control numbers.

hake has been taking a hammering all round the country - very unlikely :evil:

In reply to Big Phil.. I feel you are being a little optimistic thinking the big fish might be hiding out elsewhere. I feel if they were in the lough somewhere they would crop up in the usual places from time to time and being the sort of fish that attack most things some anglers would be lucky every so often.
After all, if i remember correctly, Sean Neill's anglerfish was a complete suprise when it came up.
Someone like tom Martin might have an idea or two but he's pretty cagey and rightfully so. If i were to make a complete guess your only chance is to get on a slack tide with braid and fish some very deep water outside the lough.
And just to make you realise how much the lough has declined, I remember one of the BETS boats taking angler and monkfish from Ballyholme bay! when it was too rough to get out to the better marks.