Proliferation of sea lice

[Tanglerat]

Has anyone noticed a lot more fish being landed that have sea lice on them - more so than normal?

I was fishing Tory Island at the weekend - boat - and practically all of the pollock and coalies had sea lice on them. And we did catch a lot of pollock and coalies.

[Last Cast]

I have seen a lot of large sea lice on Pollock this year, some of them would be the same size as those on a fresh run Salmon. I have often seen small sea lice on Pollock and flounder but never big ones. Some Pollock had several lice on them.

Very few lice on any fresh Salmon or Seatrout that I landed this year. One or two lice per fish, some had none, very few visible marks on skin of fish from where lice had just fallen off.

[kieran]

Must confess to having seen none on any of the sea trout landed this year and that would be unusual.
Have not landed enough Pollack to make a call on them - but have noticed massive increase in cages in Clew Bay, so surprised not to see more sea lice.

[Bob]

I was out as recently as last night and have yet to see any sea lice on pollock in the South East corner. Some fine healthy (and big) fish being caught too, unfortunately not by me. Maybe it's just local populations?

[Tanglerat]

Dunno at all. It's not as if there's any farms nearby - the closest would be in Mulroy Bay, and whilst that Bay is infested with farms, I'd have thought the sea lice plume from them would be pretty dispersed by the time it reached Tory Island.

But in 30 years of fishing around Tory I can't remember ever seeing the likes of it before.

[bogwoppit]

Salmon lice (lepeoptheirus salmonis) will not attach to anything other than salmonids. From what I hear, lice numbers seem to be low this year on the farms.
Probably down to the low temperatures we're having this year.

The lice you see on the pollock are probably caligus lice. Also known as herring lice I believe, they can live on any marine species I think and numbers are usually dependent on herring or mackerel stocks.

[Buddner]

I foul hocked a sprat last week with sea lice on it??????????????????????.....Never seen that before.

[Mozza]

I caught a 5lb Bass a few weeks back and I was amazed how much sea lice was on her, I flicked them off before I returned the fish. I have caught a few more since but none of them had any lice on them and the same with the ones my mate had.

[Steve]

In Kerry for last week and a half. Close on 200 sea trout caught now and I've never seen lice levels like this.

Not a bass in sight either but that's another sad story.

[Paddy002]

at the beginning of July in youghal I was catching plenty of flounder, all of them had signs of lice. Im not sure how you'd quantify a "large amount" of lice but say 10 - 15 dotted all over a small fish looks like a lot to me!

[Bradan]

As bogwoppit says the Lepeophtheirus lice won't infest non-salmonid fish. Lice numbers on salmon farms are getting worse, sea trout runs in Connemara are decimated this year and any sea trout I've seen have been riddled with lice. Have heard from a salmon farmer that they can't control lice numbers anymore, the lice are becoming resistant to the chemicals used to treat.