increasing bag limit

https://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/natural- ... -2018.aspx

as far as i am aware there has recently been a proposal to increase the daily pike bag limit on the above waters. can anyone shed any light on this? the point has been made that 4 fish caught and kept in surrounding counties/lakes could be falsely claimed to have been caught in the these waters. this is surely not good for pike fishing in Ireland!?

Killing any pike is not good, but this minister is mearly obliging his constituents.

A fair point. These lakes already suffer from the mass removal of pike through gill nets and catch and kill comps via section 59 exemptions. You also will have locals killing every pike no matter what size that they catch.

Coarse fish numbers are constantly on the rise on these lakes and they are bound to compete with trout for invertebrates. Factor is the usual suspects of slurry run-off, coniferous monoculture, livestock encroachment upon riparian zones, climate change along with increasing flooding of rivers and good old pike gets the short end or blame for any drops in trout numbers.

Back to your point about poachers putting up photos or using any new changes to the fishing regs to take advantage of what they might and probably are already doing

Several scientific papers state that pike have very little impact upon larger, deeper lakes above 1 km2 in size with alternative forms of fodder fish in abundance. Pike will do a lot of damage to smaller lakes where only salmonoids make up the greater fish biomass.

So if pike numbers drop considerably about the country will anglers then turn their attentions to trout and salmon? What sort of impact might this have upon their numbers if people don't bother with the catch and release anymore?

Your last point. Removing large numbers of Pike, especially large fish, has been shown to increase the overall numbers of small pike in a system. Small Pike will prey on small trout, thus making heavy inroads into the available spawning stock. I think that is called shooting yourself in the foot.

Ya, they still have gill netting and electo-fishing though, pike stocks should be well and truly decimated.

I regularly go out on the kayak and have paddled a few of the feeder rivers into the Corrib covering several stretches. Dead sheep, collapsed banks, drains leaking foul smell liquid into areas are the norm. Sitka spruce monoculture looks to be another big looming threat to water quality and also increased flooding.

Sean Kyne's proposal is all about securing votes up around Oughterard, nothing more unfortunately.

i emailed an objection to the IFI through the following link if anyone else feels compelled to do the same.

Any person may submit observations/objections to the draft regulations at any time during the period of 21 days concluding at 5pm on 25 May, 2018, either by e-mail to inland.fisheries@dccae.gov.ie or by post to the address below. All submissions received will be published on the Department's website following the conclusion of the consultation period.

You wouldn't believe the amount of coarse fish on Corrib. I trout fish on Corrib a lot, but this is very misguided. I personally believe that the trout angles are reacting to some of the pictures of some lovely Pike caught in recent years form the few new guides that now offer pike guiding on Corrib & other lakes. Corrib is full of coarse fish, I will try dig out sonar pictures that I got a few years ago when fishing deeper water for Ferox.... Acres of coarse fish..... Acres

A friend of mine had a 12lb trout this year on corrib that had eaten a 1.5lb trout. When he landed it we could see the trouts tail sticking out its gullet. Picture attached I hope. Just shows that trout eat trout so don't blame all the pike. Caz

http://www.offthescaleangling.ie/issue2 ... #&panel1-4

there is a bit more on this in the current issue. unbelievable.