Something inside is not looking forward to 2013 Spring Summer coarse fishing..

DangerMouse27

Hey all,

As the title says, I cannot wait for the weather and water levels of the shannon to reach a good level so I can resume the hunt for my specimen, or at least mega sized bream and tench.
Why am I wistful that I will come across less and less due to the influence of the foreign fisherman who does not believe in conservation on any levels.

Is now until Feb/March the time to get the word out about rules and regulations and fines. Ifi could post a few leaflets in Polish/Latvian/Lithuanian to those food shops that exist in most towns and counties.

I fished a fair bit on my own last year and came across at least two Ffs who had buckets of dead fish, all sizes, just caught. Of course I said something but they pretended to ignore me and said they didnt understand english and laughed to themselves. I rang a local baliff and though he said he would check it out, the damage was done.

What do experience anglers do when they come across such barabarism?

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DangerMouse27 wrote: »

What do experience anglers do when they come across such barabarism?

Never approach them.
Ring the IFI Hotline 1890 34 74 24 and report it. Keep your local IFI officer's number in your phone if possible. If you have their number, ring them instead of the hotline. Poachers have to be caught "in the act" by a member of the IFI to be caught, if they are approached, they might just pack up and leave.


As for the season ahead, I cant wait for it to be honest. I try and fish areas that are well off the beaten track, or not beside a main road. poaching isnt as bad as it was during the boom, but its still a big problem.

SeaFields

Mod note:

From the charter

Do not encourage violence towards poachers
It is both Silly and dangerous.

Just in case this discussion continues, quick reminder:)

Caribs

At risk of creating an avalanche of argument and examples I think we need to be careful tarring all the foreign national anglers as people who take all out of the water.

I fish with quite a few foreign anglers, mostly Eastern Europeans and they are very keen on conservation and strongly support putting fish back. Even when we have discussions on issues such as pike infestation on the upper reaches of the Owenriff for example they are against deliberately targeting the pike.

I think we sometimes forget that for generations we Irish have been very good at hitting fish stocks hard be it through drift nets and poaching or just having a good days fishing and keeping the catch.

The difference for me is that species that traditionally would have been put back are now being kept and to their credit the coarse fishermen groups have been far more organised and vocal than the trout & salmon groups. I do agree that some foreign anglers are killing everything they see but think we need to remember that us Irish aren't bad at it either when it suits.

Bizzum

I think its the usual, a minority spoiling things for the majority. I know I said this before, but I'll say it again. In my mind most of the harm caused by lads killing fish was done even before the current legislation was in place. Pre '06 there was nothing stopping lads filling dustbins with Coarse fish (excluding Pike), this applied to specimen sized fish as well as smaller ones. A lot of damage was done here because the lads had a mindset that it was a free-for-all, which it was, and it took a lot to change that mindset, multilingual leaflets were distributed, multiliugual signage erected and a lot of fines issued/ proceedings taken against etc.
No doubt a lot more work needs to be done but I'd be hopeful we have seen the worse of it.