Look after your wrasse - a salutary lesson from Donegal

I've taken for granted the quality of the wrasse fishing close to home for the past 20 or so years that i fished them. One mark in particular was simply a case, i'm not boasting either, of dropping a crab bait down and receiving instant bites. It was as easy as angling gets. Every time i fished it the fish either switched off as darkness came on or i simply ran out of baits as crabs were attacked right left and centre, either way i'd expect an average session to include 20 to 35 wrasse averaging around 3lbs with a few over 4lbs to make you smile. In the last four years we had maybe 5 or 6 specimen fish too. It really was fast and furious fishing every time, thumpers of wrasse.

Last year i had company on that mark for one of the first times with about 4 or 5 eastern europeans, I'd never seen them on it before but since then they've become a regular occurrence at the weekends. So much so that they've worn a path across the field were they drove down their 4X4. Any wrasse i've seen them land were knocked on the head. Two weeks ago a few mates and myself went down and there were 11 of them(from same group)) fishing it and killing all the wrasse they caught. There was a virtual mound of blood and ruddy great wrasse scales left where they'd been filleting the catch. That same day i managed a solitary fish and this has been replicated a number of times, with a mere handful of wrasse each session. I fished it again this morning and blanked in what were perfect conditions.

So in the course of slightly over a year we've gone from twenty to thirty a session to blanks thanks to these lads killing what are a slow growing, territorial sport fish. This has really shocked me that a bunch like this could have had such an impact but let it be a word of warning to any of the rest of you to look after your wrasse marks before the end up like the one i've described. And no i'm not a fascist/racist/zenophobe but i'm a seriously drunk off angler that has seen a great wrasse mark utterly destroyed to feed these people.

Shame Pete. The simple but mighty wrasse are probably my favourite fish to catch. I get dissapointed when I get one from the boat and it blows a swim bladder. Seeing a mark cleansed of wrasse is a down right disgrace.

I have to go to Hook Head to find wrasse. Hook head suffered from comp prssures (fish dying before weigh in) before measuring became the norm. Haven'tseen too many been taken from there. Still only seeing numbers of good fish back last couple of years. Takes a long time for wrasse populations to recover

I brought a brother of an eastern european ex fishing to Hook once and he wanted to keep fish so I let him keep one wrasse. We kept a few mack and a pollock. I prepared and cooked the fish and the mackerel and pollock went down a treat but the wrasse was the worst tasting fish I ever tried including mullet which wasn't bad. They likened it to carp, which I ate over there one christmass and reckon the a and r are the wrong way round.

I have had numerous arguements over such actions, and have even had knives pointed at me. There is lads fishing a local harbour taking everything including small flats and eel. Watched them fish 3 rods each cleaning the place out. When I'm fishing mullet I try to avoid my set up being seen as to avoid them being targeted.

When in OZ I found there system quite efficient and well policed with clear size and bag limits for each species of fish. Policing is our issue What can we do, education seems to be pointless, confrontation dangerous and and any control measures absent for most fish.

Sorry for the rant and restraint was proving tough typing this. Shame their handbrake cable wouldn't fail on their 4x4 while they were destroying the wrasse in your area.

Pete, hope they blank a few and f off..

Hooker

a sad but now common occurance at a lot of our own good marks pete our favourite wrasse mark on the antrim coast has been hammered this past 2 summers by many of the same types. in a 6 hour session we used to get 40 to 50 wrasse up to 4lb and occasionally bigger. now your lucky to get a dozen between 3 of us with 2lb now being a big fish. i've sat enraged during a session watching these fellas fill countless tesco bags with everything that was caught regardless of size or species at first i thought that education was the way to go and had a word with 3 FN fellas explaining to them that the wrasse that inhabit our waters are a slow growing territorial fish. often taking up to and exceeding 6 years before reaching breeding age. also they choose a nesting site and the males build this at the start of the summer to attract females to breed with. once a pair have formed up the mating occures and the male is left to guard the eggs in the nest from predators until they hatch. so an area and an entire population of wrasse could be wiped out in the course of just one summer if everyone killed every wrasse that was caught. added to that, any wrasse that was fortunate enough to sucessfully breed would have to guard the eggs, and if every wrasse being caught was killed the possibility for a population collapse within a set area would be a very realistic scenario with no parent wrasse to defend next years generation.
i was polite, articulate and friendly in my approach with the 3 guys. their reply was,
"" yeah,, they taste good ha ha ha!""
i took all my self restraint not to kick the 3 of them off the ledge they were fishing from . now we stay away from the mark and to be honest hardly report anything on open boards anymore. it's all done by PM's with trusted anglers as a lot of those sorts have discovered sites like this on the net and exploit them to horriffic effect.
a sad sign of the times

not all foreign people who fish are mindless fish killers some are anglers like you and me who keep some fish but respect the fact that the sea is not a limitless Smörgåsbord ,also lets not forget their are plenty of locals who are willing to rape the sea for a fast buck or a tastey meal even if it is 6 schoolies i think a size limit on all fish is a good idea but in the current financial climate i doubt if the money required to police it would be forthcoming then again some headway has been made in our inland waterways with course fish getting protection why not the sea too?

It upsets me to see post like this cause its the truth and again as Rodger say its not always FN's, one mark i fish regular, there are a load of chinese lads which i get on great with and they have the utmost respect for the fish they catch, in fact another group of chinese lads came out and the first group (whom I know) started to give out to the second group for taking small fish!! heres the fun bit they gave out to them in english, when no response came, they gave out to them in chinese, the second group packed up and moved away within minutes, muttering something under breath, another mark i fish, I fished it with a polish lad, and agian he has alot of respect for the fish and environment, two polish lads came down, with beer etc, fished and were taking very small joey macks, the lad i know gave out in polish, the other two started a war of words, and I decided enough is enough and after a few comments they moved off, but after leaving they threw down empty beer cans , I havent fished that mark since (i will in the winter) as it just ruined the whole fishing experience for me. Its a sad fact that education of Marine Biology doesnt come into it when some only think about food source, I have a family and my kids love fish BUT I have taught them the basics, some fish are too small to keep, and keeping it simple, there wouldnt be enough forkfuls on small fish, when they are older I will give them the more complex reasons.

I don't want to generalise about which nationality indulges in this type of behaviour and i don't think i have in my post but from my own personal experience at this mark it has been eastern europeans, 100%. I hear what your saying Roger in that there are decent ee anglers too, indeed i've met a few on this site also.

I think what has shocked me most is that angling with rod and line could have such a devestating impact on a stock of fish.....little polllock, whiting, flatties, coalies etc. are such fast growing wee feckers that i don't think it makes as much of a difference what is kept but these wrasse are such slow growing animals, territorial and not overly smart that they are so vulnerable to exploitation. That mark simply was full of 3lb fish and now they are virtually wiped out....gone, its almost hard to believe...for the first few times i even thought some kind of wrasse disease had developed and devestated the population. d**e that i am i think wrasse are a great fish and i have lovingly returned every single one i caught here...then these people come along and bludgeon every single one of them to death without a thought .

Ah jese maybe it's them that have the right idea and we were being overly sentimental with our fish but I'd definetly fear for any wrasse marks that this type of angler finds because they simply will clean them out. Hooker & Al/Jordan i hear exactly where your coming from....when you see it for your own eyes it really makes the blood boil.

Alright Pete,
Im still having sleepless nights after what we witnessed
A truely disturbing sight
The thing is that these people know its wrong and how we feel about it...
Why else would they pack up 30mins after we arrived?? We stood and watched them taking every single fish and everytime they landed one they turned to see if we were still watching....
Some of those wrasse were barely 4 inches long!!
It makes my blood boil just thinking about it

not all foreign people who fish are mindless fish killers

Never in my 25+ years of fishing have i watched locals partake in such a slaughter of baby fish...
Yes there are some out there who will take a boot full of pollack,cod or bass if they get the chance.
But these FN`s are so well organized they even bring 40 gallon drums to fill when they go out..
They had 4 lobster pots and chains with big hooks for congers..
10 of them using rods for the wrasse while one cleans what they catch.
The pile of wrasse scales they left behind was from a ridiculous amount of fish..
Then there`s the rubbish they left behind..bags bottles and beers cans etc.

How long do you think marks like this can survive this assault??

These people hate this country and everything about it,apart from the money!!
I work with a guy from their part of the world and all he thinks about is how he can get money to send home..He`ll do almost anything to get it and its all he talks about..MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!!! oh and how crap this country is
Thankfully he doesn`t fish but i totally disagree with why he`s here..and that he`s allowed to do it...
Dont get me wrong,i quite like the guy but as soon as he`s got all he can from the country he`s gone..

I know that not all FN`s are up to no good but the fact is that ALOT of them are..

Maybe im a bit more racist than my good mate Pete but i strongly believe that if you can`t contribute anything useful to your choosen country,or atleast respect it,then why the hell should you be allowed to stay????

all very valid points raised by fellow site members. but just to clarify my earlier post. in my own personal experience the overwhelming majority of the people wiping out harbour and rock marks HAVE been non irish. i have highlighted in an earlier shore report, the single incident when a few lads, (idiots) from belfast killed over 30 codling all under 1lb at waterfoot pier. but at bangor, donaghadee, limerick point, blackhead, portmuck, the blue pool, ramore head, dunsevrick rocks, ballycastle harbour, kinbane head, runkerry, garron point, cushendall rocks, carric a reed and torr head, all those taking part in the systematic wholesale slaughter of small fish and wrasse and espically conger eels have all been done by non irish nationals. i know i might take a bit of flack for saying this, but it is the truth. i cannot help but report what i see and hear. if 9 out of every 10 of the offenders happen to be foreigners well then that's just how it is. but i have met 1 eastern european fella at ramore head who was as equally angered as myself by what 3 fellow eastern european lads were up to killing everything. we both watched them kill countless wrasse and pollack and he shouted something at them in their native tounge that did'nt go down too well and a bit of a row broke out. i stood up to let them know exactly where my intentions lay, backing up the lad who was giving off to them and they packed up and moved on. that polish fella was a 100% sound and a real decent bloke. but like i said, he sadly appears to be in the minority. and if that's how the ratios appear, then thats just the way it is.
sadly, education is not the way to go because they all know fine well what they are at, and they know it is'nt on. but so long as they go home with a full bag or bucket of fish they really could'nt care less. it's just a pity we do not have a willing government body to deal with such incidents. but lets face it. if we are gonna be brutally honest about it. when you see how unwilling and disinterested the appointed bodies are to do anything about the illegal netting and capture of bass, what chance would other species realistically stand of protection . i read all the time on this site about fisheries officers being told about illegal nets locations and sweet FA being done about it. even when concerned anglers have called to report incidents they have just been passed from department to department with no one wanting to take anything to do with it. or worse than that, nets just left out there fishing away and the old "we can't remove them until the offenders come back to retrieve them" routine being played out. yeah, is that right? your waiting to catch them red handed. well that would be a good trick considering in the same breath they play the old "we only have a few men on set hours, so could'nt have someone sat round the clock waiting for a net to be brought in" routine. it's an absolute disgrace.
we've heard the same excuses played out over and over again.
sorry to rant on, but this is a subject that really annoys me.
apoligies in advance.

[fedstar]

Hello ,people like this walk all over us in our own land , we the people of north/south
own this land, our countries take these people in, house them, feed them and give them more rights than us, and what do we get ? We get a bunch of politicaly correct jokers sitting and correcting us for our wrongs, ffs stand up for yourselves, stand up for youre rights, me no speaky english yeh, but they can still count the money.

Last edited by fedstar on Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

not all foreign people who fish are mindless fish killers

This type of comment is getting really boring everyone knows maybe one or two FN's that don't kill all their fish. The same
way I know one or two Irish people that don't drink.
They must read this site and see people sticking up for them and pee themselves laughing. No wonder they
don't listen to anyone when they are being backed up.
The majority are killing all they get thats who we have to concentrate on and not congratulating the minority.
Also I wonder how many of the minority help out with phone calls and the like to the authorities.
Please stop saying the same old saying the truth is most of these guys are greedy greedy greedy.
Rant over!
Tommy

the problem with your attitude Al is that in this day and age of over sensitive political correctness is far to easy to get called a racist, bigot or xenophobe for speaking out against anyone who isnt white irish or british, but i say **** em, call a spade a spade.

this issue goes far further than fishing, it opens up a wider debate on immigration policies in general. in my opinion far too many jonny foreigners are only here to rape our countries (north and south) for whatever they can get, money, sex, drugs, legal or illegal for some it doesnt matter, and a lot give nothing in return. Since bulgaria became part of the EU a few years ago there was a huge influx of them to belfast looking for money, jobs and benefits. since then all the local homeless big issue sellers have been pushed out and now only foreigners are selling the big issues in the city centre as well as just out right begging for money. i hate beggars, i never used to but after i lived in dublin for a year they got on my nerves very quickly, i dont mind the buskers though, at least they are doing something for their money. this is just an example but i dont see why we should be the ones having to make so many concessions to foreigners. this is our country and if they want to live here they should learns the rules. i say again this is our country, these are the rules, follow them or go home.

if someone wants to immigrate, work, pay taxes, contribute to society, great, welcome to our "sunny" shores. but if all they want to do is take advantage, take the piss and not play by the rules then they should go right off back to where they came from..some may think this is a racist comment but i say no it isnt...i hold myself to the same values. if i moved to another country and figured i could do whatever the hell i wanted because they do things different where i come from and generally piss everyone off i would expected to be sent home. i mean think of how many english football supporters get deported from europe for getting drunk and creating a bit of trouble, if its that easy in europe to be deported for a relatively minor offence the same rules should apply here but apparently not.

back to the point....i seriously believe that nothing will ever be done to combat this by anyone who has the power to do so..it is a subject that really gets me angry, more so out of frustration due to the fact there is nothing i can do about. i was at red bay pier the other week and me and dad were catching away at pollock and coalies just as it was getting dark, bewtween us we kept 3 fish to eat but the ones we kept were ones that had swallowed the hook and were pissing blood, probably would have kept some anyway if none had swallowed the hook but everything else went back, about half an hour before dark a dozen or so foreigners landed and started pulling in coalies, as they were on the feed it was nearly a fish a cast and every single one went into a bucket, not only that but they were pretty much standing on top of us trying to squeeze in and constantly tangling our lines as well. i was really angry, frustrated, annoyed but unsurprisingly not at all shocked in the slightest. its just another example of greed and ignorance and just outright rudeness. one of my biggest gripes are those who break the unwritten rules..mainly "dont upset or disturb someone else when they are trying to fish". its just good manners but when people fishing over the top of me really makes we angry. once at bangor harbour, actually my first time there i was fishing off the end of the pier standing on the grates, some old man comes and sets up on the breakwater RIGHT ABOVE ME and starts casting over my head. i literally had to move if he was reeling in and was constantly having to ask him to tighten his line as it was in my face and once got caught on my neck. you can only be nice and ignored for so long so eventually i cut his line, Oh you should have seen his face, the first time was a picture, but then he just cast straight over me again, so when i cut his line again he turned purple. much words were exchanged but i stood my ground and eventually he did what i asked him to do in the first place which was to move 3 blocks over. peace was returned, although i couldnt help feeling smug catching fish whilst he caught NOTHING HA HA HA. moral of this story is i could only get my point across by taking drastic measures and i feel the same measures are needed to stop the wholesale slaughter of our baby fish. problem is, it will be hard to do it without breaking the law and as much as i want to protect my fish i dont think i want to go to jail for it.

bottom line is, we all care about this issue but no-one else does, we can complain, we can write letters, sign potitions but unless the powers that be start actually caring they nothing will be done as the greed of these people will not be deterred by a few drunk off locals unless they have to contend with more than red faces and raised voices.

i expect the mods may delete this post as admittedly i come across as a racist prick but im not. my neighbours are bulgarian and we get on very well, my ex girlfriend was malaysian (one of the reasons we broke up cos everything was money money money with her). i just really hate people not showing proper respect when visiting somewhere, imagine someone visits your home and steals all the food out of the fridge then urinates on the carpet. they are doing the same thing and not just with the fish but in all areas of country and numerous different ways.i cant say if its the vast majority or minority doing this but if all you see are the bad ones is easy to become judgemental.

i could go on all day but ill start going off topic again and make even less sense.

we need to make a stand, its easy to go unnoticed if we are scattered around the coastline in ones twos and threes, its a shame we cant get every angler in the country togther in the one place to make formal protest. seems every other bleeding heart group of people who have something to complain about can manage it, why cant we? i cant cos i wouldnt even know where to start but if someone else wants to count me in.

rant concluded for the mean time

[fishy1987]

Thats horrible to hear!im finding it hard to get that mental image of wrasse blood/guts out of my head!

Last edited by fishy1987 on Sun Oct 16, 2011 7:47 am, edited 3 times in total.

Shocking report Pete,,,,,,,I've had many an enjoyable fishing session thanks to the humble wrasse. I've seen the same thing happen at a local mark,,,wrasse wiped out,,,,thankfully they seem to have recovered this year. The lack of a legal size limit doesnt help when youre trying to stop them. I used to use my measure (with British minimum size limits ) to try and fool them into believing that we actually had minimum size limits , but you know the story, possibility of confrontation , blood pressure rises , etc etc. For what its worth, your story has motivated me to email Simon Coveney and draw his attention to the absence of a minimum legal size limit. and i'm going to bombard him with emails till he replies. We have foreign nationals on the site here so maybe they could help spread the message, but its hard to argue the case without the backup of the law and minimum size limits. Well done on raising the issue. My one nights fishing in Donegal recently was in the company of four other anglers, all foreign nationals,,,,,or maybe I just couldnt understand the Donegal accent

Lads, just sat and read all of these and its all boils down to one thing, they only do it because they can get away with it. My missus is russian, ive been to russia and a lot of other euro contries and if ye p**s of any of the locals or the cops ye will get a hammering. All this political correct and nicey nicey c**p is just not working. My wife has a few FN friends here and they have said to me and her, "maybe we come fish with you". They have been told rather politely "not a feckin chance" as she has the same stance on this as everyone else on this subject. When the wee ones at school some mornings we hit the shoreline, 99% is catch & release. What im trying to say about this isssue is that if they did this in there own country, they would get what is coming to them. As for the rivers etc, they are being looked after now by the fisheries etc because licence holders have been up in arms, and rightly so. I made the point in another post about the amount of nets found in dunany point lately and that the guards, fisheries and anyone who will listen have been contacted and they never showed up. 2 nets found in ballagan point and the fisheries are all over it the next day. Why, one good for trout and one good for bass. This is not going to get any better until the government, guards and anyone else in power who can change this grow a set of ba**s and start hitting them hard were it hurts. Money. Weather they are FN or irish, fine the feck outta them and use the money from the fines for more fisheries officers. Ireland is just an easy touch lads, what is there for them to fear, prisons are only for those who dont pay there tv licence or wont let esb rip up there land. The fines are completely useless and the judges in this country will only say "sure ye look like a good we lad, i'm sure ye have learnt your lesson" Now i know this will annoy some of ye, but i would rather pay 100 quid a year for a coastal licence if it would in any way help in getting rid of the p**ks that are doing this and there should be a bag limit on any fish that is slow growing and that is threatened by this type of fishing. I cant come across as racist (especially with stallin sitting beside me) but this post only highlights one area were the FN's have cleaned out, multiply this probably by hundreds week after week and this is what we are looking at for the future..

I done a bit of internet searching on regulations in eastern european countrys,poland first you must have a licence for sea and fresh also bag limits and weight of bag,you even have to do an exam for freshwater fishing,they have loads a rules trust me google it they have rules to beat the band,dont ever think their ignorant to what their doin,bulgaria has regulations and licences too,romania is a free for all with just a one month close season so they might not know,quick summary they know exactly what their doin but its not illegal unfortunatly,and its been said before they dont give a damn about ireland only money,but until this government pulls the finger out our fish fresh and salt are at their mercy,now dont even get me started about commercial fishing,seems to me the government will only cop on when all the stocks collapse

Oh dear oh dear! There was a similiar thread on here about 5 wks ago about Rosslaire and the mods blocked my post. The FN's dont care and in certain cases enjoy flouting the rules / winding us up!!! I drive a lorry for a living and on my travels often bump into a coarse angler from Portadown Co Armagh; the stories he tells me are terrible. He recently showed me a mural painted on a wall in Portadown (yes a mural) of a cartoon character holding cartoon fish bones. There was a statement in Polish and in brackets underneath in english " kill and eat everything ". I will endeavour to get this and then get someone half computer savvy to post it here. I know (knew) good conger marks all along s.east antrim coast; this is the first year I havenae had one on my door step. I could tell you a thousand stories about these guys, but I dont want to rant. My auld boy works in former Eastern block regularly and tells me that if the Irish/British were to move there on mass, half of us would be in jail for nothing because the Police are so corrupt; yet these guys feel they can come over here and do as they please. I have no bother with anybody coming here to earn a crust but I wish they would play by our rules when it comes to fishing and wish people would stop being so bloody sensitive when we criticise them.

Probably one of the most annoying but best threads I've read in a long time. I hope this is allowed to continued and not moderated
to nothing. This shows what way people are feeling and if allowed air their views something may get done about it. I get so angry when
typing about something like this as I'm sure you all do (that's not right). One of the worst stories I heard was of someone going around mainly
polish communities selling coarse fish from a van??? Imagine if that was bass.
We really need to get the fisheries officers onto this forum and introduce themselves and post, it might move things along a lot quicker.
I also agree with what someone said about a coastal licence if it stopped poaching on bass alone if would be well worth it.
15 nets in Dunnanny point??? If they allowed commercial fishing again I don't think they'd bother cos at this rate there will be nothing left!!
Tommy

I have said many times before..... Every species of fish needs a minimum size limit and bag limit. Even if it's none and none.. It needs to be documented and we need enforcement coupled with serious fines for any breach. Personally I would pay a license as long as 100% of the fee went towards the enforcement... There are enough stealth taxes! I understand tthe sentiment that there should b no license of sea fishing while there is a whole sale rape going on, but these eejits, Foreign or Irish will not buy a license. If it cost me €40 quid a year for this privilege I would consider it a bargain and money well spent...

guys 2 yrs ago all of this was highlighted .at the time we were talking about our harbours being raped.if i remember rightly eyes reilly wrote about them taking everything (except blennys which he was told tasted s***) from wicklow harbour.these are organized day trips fishing, beer,and all the woman waiting at home for the hunters to bring home the catch.all under 4 inchs long. harbours are the nurserys for most of our native species.if they are wiped out that leaves nothing.no wrasse no pollock no whiting just blennys(cause they taste s***). having just come back from kilmore paul bates told me he only brings fns he knows out, and they abide by his rules .during the summer he returned to the harbour after having problems with 1 polish guy who got very agressive when paul tagged and tried to release a tope he had just landed. he also told me they do try and bunk on to the boat when a group is boarding he now asks anyone coming on board are they all together.just incase of cling ons having seen what has been done to the lakes around our little country(which had the best fishing in europe) and our canals something has to give .i know that in some parts of spain and the caneries its illigal to fish in the harbours ,because there treated as nurseries and its the police that moniter it. you try cast a rod in to the harbour in lanzorote and in 5 mins the cops are there.as i have said before when i was a kid this is were we learned our sport you could catch pollock and coalie s off dunlaire pier just dropping down the wall, pollock all around a lb in weight
you wont get that now.in fact i doubt if you can get anything. because there is nothing left to get. if you take all the babies there cant be any adults.when you think that this has happened in a very short time you have to ask how much time is left. we need to protect our harbours, and also some of the reefs around this country.to keep all of our fish safe and give them time to regroup .maybe even some man made reefs to give them back some sort of habitat.when these guys leave ireland and go home i bet there lakes rivers and seas will be all ok as there attorities dont hang about inforcing there laws

I used to think that this country needed fn's to help bring some sort of normality and to drag us into a cosmopolitan new era. But i have yet to see the good of this open door policy. Our economies have not benefited as polititians would have us believe. Money is being earnt but not spent in our country. Laws are ignored. Crime rates have risen. Indiginous population struggle to find employment. Fn's jumping to the top of the queue for social housing. And on top of all that we have lost some of the best fishing in Europe if not the world.

I too have witnessed to wholesale slaughter of immature fish by these people and i'm sick to the back teeth of it.

We used to catch slabs of common bream and specimen roach not to mention quality brown and rainbow trout in my local dams. Not any more ! The seas around Co Antrim and Down have had their fish populations decimated. I think this year has been the worst years fishing i've ever had in the 30 years i've been at this game. Marks that in previous years have thrown up fish have been barren. I've never experienced so many blanks and on other occasions what we've caught hasn't been worth talking about. I've even stopped keeping a fishing diary as looking back at the reports was depressing me.

It's not just the fish that are suffering. Our birds and mamals are taking a hammering too. Believe it or not but fn's have been throwing down bread for wildfowl in local parks then when the brids come close enough they use nets to catch them.

It really is high time something is done to stop these people treating our land as some kind of free for all larder. The only thing is, if we lobby our political elite they won't be interested and if we take to the streets in protest we'll be seen as a bunch of racist xenophobic idiots. After all, to the majority of our population it really doesn't matter if our fish are wiped out. They'll still be able to buy it in Tesco's.

To anyone who finds this offensive i'll say this. My grandfather and great grandfather fought in world wars so that the free people of this world could enjoy the right to express their opinion. They would turn in their graves if they could see what we have allowed to happen to this country on our watch !