Ireland Welcomes Anglers - NOT!

I have heard rumours that they are going to lift the Ban on commercial bass fishing to appease the salmon netters. They would be targeting Bass but allowed a certain number of salmon as a by catch in their nets.

Its a tricky one as you would have to look at the argument from both sides but surely the salmon netters must see the dwindling numbers in their nets and must understand that its a matter of time before their nets are constantly empty...?

We are starting to get the Bass numbers back up now, if the ban is lifted it will take a short period of time to ruin years of work.

This means that the commercial group is much better organized in strategy, alignment, lobbying and all the things that are neccesary for any group to achieve their objectives.

So illegal bass fishing continues at its normal rate all summer - as it has done and will continue to do. Anglers get a little angry shake their fists etc but at the end of the day nothing happens or changes. there is no counter organisation to offer alternatives even though they are much more commercially sound, sustainable, and can be managed correctly and efficiently.

Worst case scenario the government bows to commercial pressure and lifts the bass fishing ban. Another species dissappears in a couple of years - sea anglers shake their fists etc and......

Sea anglers need to work together now like their freshwater counterparts!

Im willing to do more than shake my fist, and id hope to have some backing from the lads...we need action on this..any illegal fishing needs to be punished, and if we dont have the government support, we need to support each other...im willing to create an action group designed to act!!! any1 interested pm me...

Dave,
you need to be careful, the idea of setting up vigilante style groups is going to get the site into trouble.
Paul

Dave,
you need to be careful, the idea of setting up vigilante style groups is going to get the site into trouble.
Paul

nothing incinuated here about violence, i dont condone any acts of violence toward poachers!!... but thanks for the heads up paul...

I can only write about what I have seen happen with my own eyes on the Shannon and Corrib systems.

So you are telling me that they never take mature fish out of the systems and strip them?

I still firmly believe that the real winners here are the fish farmers.

I can only write about what I have seen happen with my own eyes on the Shannon and Corrib systems.

So you are telling me that they never take mature fish out of the systems and strip them?

I still firmly believe that the real winners here are the fish farmers.

Of course they take mature salmon from the system - hatchery fish will return to the hatchery, the same as wild fish will return to their native river. Just because they take a mature fish doesn't mean they have taken a wild fish that would have spawned elsewhere. The Corrib hatchery you refer to has a trap and 95% of the fish taken in the trap are hatchery-origin fish. Same on the Shannon, although I don't know the percentages. There are very very few wild fish left in the Shannon anyway, but that's down to the dams being built and blocking passage rather than hatchery operations.
Regardless of whether they are wild or hatchery fish, the important fact is that all their offspring go back into the catchment, as eggs, fry, parr or smolts, and not to fish farms, as you tried to imply in your first post.

Sure, the fish farms will benefit from less competition from wild fish products, but don't try to say they benefit from State-run hatchery operations using wild fish - that's just make-believe

I am sorry but again that not what I have seen.

I have seen the fish taken from the river at Parteen by the ESB.
I have seen them mix the eggs and milt. I have seen them place the resulting fertilised eggs in a device under pressure which is designed to split the nuclei in two ( make two fish from one egg). They were then put into a tank and shipped to Norway. That I am very sure of.

On the Corrib system at Cong, I have seen the trucks arrive in the middle of the night, load up with the same mixture as above and head to god knows where. The question as always why load up in the middle of the night

On the Inagh system, which was once owned by Carroll industries, I have seen the fish taken by a private company from a natural system, milked , fertilised, and the resulting smolt sold to fish farmers in the area.

So I know that wild salmon are been used to provide the raw material for salmon farms.
So despite what the official line is, it has happened and I am sure it is still happening.
That's why I believe that fish farmers and not anglers or inshore nets-men are depleting natural stocks.

I am sorry but again that not what I have seen.

I have seen the fish taken from the river at Parteen by the ESB.
I have seen them mix the eggs and milt. I have seen them place the resulting fertilised eggs in a device under pressure which is designed to split the nuclei in two ( make two fish from one egg). They were then put into a tank and shipped to Norway. That I am very sure of.

On the Corrib system at Cong, I have seen the trucks arrive in the middle of the night, load up with the same mixture as above and head to god knows where. The question as always why load up in the middle of the night

On the Inagh system, which was once owned by Carroll industries, I have seen the fish taken by a private company from a natural system, milked , fertilised, and the resulting smolt sold to fish farmers in the area.

So I know that wild salmon are been used to provide the raw material for salmon farms.
So despite what the official line is, it has happened and I am sure it is still happening.
That's why I believe that fish farmers and not anglers or inshore nets-men are depleting natural stocks.

How long ago is it now since you saw those things???

In fairness to you, some of these things may have happened, and I don't doubt what you saw. I can't speak for the ESB, but I know the ESB biologist and the people in the relevant regional fisheries boards, and there is no way that would be allowed today. It may have happened in the past, i.e. 1980s, but not for a long time now.
As regards the Cong hatchery, I also know the hatchery manager and staff, and there is no way any smolts from there are commercially sold.


The Inagh catchment no longer has a hatchery. The present fishery owners have no links to fish farming. There may have been a link bak in the 70s, but again, there hasn't been for ages. If you're trying to say that all these things that happened in the 70s or 80s are responsible for the decline in salmon stocks, or that fish farmers now are benefiting from wild fish hatcheries, you're way off the mark.

Don't forget, the Atlantic salmon is a European resource, and some rivers in Europe have taken Irish stock in the past for restocking programmes. Quite a few hatcheries contributed to the Rhine salmon re-introduction programme, and trucks would have taken eggs to Germany.

Oh and by the way, that pressure treatment produces triploid fish (three sets of chromosomes, can't reproduce) and not two fish from one egg.