I was reading an article on another site and i read this:

Ireland is already concerned at the lack of grilse, not withstanding the banning of drift netting, and some Scottish rivers are bereft of fish. Our colleagues in Ireland are also worried by a huge increase in licenses for gill nets for coastal Pollack fishing where salmon are a bye catch, concerned that these may be drift nets by another name.

Is it just a coincidence that suddenly there are more gill nets around for pollack

Can anyone shed a bit more light on the subject?

WCB

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There where gill nets out for Bass illegal recently somewhere around Dingle..they where only found and reported because they killed one of Fungi's friends..at least that sheds some unwelcome light on the netters atcivities

I think saying your gill netting for Pollack is just taking the p1ss

ok,

I was a commercial drift netter, its been in the family for 2 generations i'm the 3rd.


Gills nets use the same mesh except that they fish on the bottom.

The norm is what we call 45 mesh, thats the depth of net, a mesh been around 3 inches ( i will confirm this). But you can get 60 , 80 and 120.

From experience salmon generally travel on the surface, in a depth no more that 6 fathoms they can be got deeper, but the majority travel in the top.

What comes into play is how close to the shore the net is set and what depth of mesh is used.

Any more questions fire them on.

sean

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Good advice cheers mate.

Hi Sean in all your years drift netting you must have seen some big salmon what was the best one?

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there was a photo going round strabanne about 10 years ago of a fish in the high 40's maybe even 50 taken by poachers in the foyle,if i can get a hold of it ill put it up

To be honest, it was only its head left after a F***king seal. we weighed the head a 6lbs , i was only a kid at the time remember my father and grandfather wishing indegestion on the seal.

The biggest i remember was about 40lbs taken in July 1993. I will see if i can dig a picture out out. My father remember salmon,i mean proper salmon the 20lbs, not like the lats towards the end. The Grilse were getting smaller and smaller. and salmon numbers down down. I'm reviewing the logs books here, plus our own records of 30 years.

To be honest salmon only began to fall off in the mid & late 90s. Based in Galway our fishing was far more restrictive than that Donegal, Mayo or Kerry. Galway were only allowed 800yards of net, and the bay was more sheltered for the local baliffs to keep an eye on us.

Still to this day, and i know that some of you will not agree with me, i don't believe that the drift netters caused the salmon numbers to collaspe so quickly, i know they did not help, theres always bad apples.

Here is my reasoning

1. The spanish and french fished with drift nets way out west, it was report that over 200 boxes were landed one night into Rosaveel. And this happened may times andinmay ports along the coast.
2. Galway bay used to be full of prawns and shrimp, the government still has not put in place a season on shrimp fishing. What to the smolts first chase when the arrive in the sea shrimp and sand eel. Both have been overfished.
3. Mid water trawl, i know in several processing plants, smolts arriving through the herring and mackeral. What happened to them, fish meal.
4.Restoration of spawning beds and maintenace, i can confidently say that that majority of rivers in the west of Ireland, very little work was performed on spawning beds, in conjunction with this we had silting due to over grazing sheep. ( I won't go there). After the sea trout collapse fisheries kind of turned inwards, those who had other incomes through accomodation thrived, other fell aside.
4.Government incompetance. The IRISH governemnt still to this day has no apprication for fishing. The farmers sold our rights in order to polluate our lakes and rivers with slurry. What other nation with resources like ours would continue to pump raw sewage into its streams and lakes.

Yes, return numbers have improved. The surplus from the drift netters is helping, but i still remain pesimistic. The other root causes have not be addressed correctly. And the government proposal to abolish the fishery borads is a farce. Were is all the additional money from the licences going?? Big pay rises

Enough said don't get me started. and i don't mean the loss of the drift net licence, my father pushed me throught an education,university, post doc etc. He believed that the future was not a sea, only long hours and hardship, on a mininum wage (based on the hours worked, and days away from home). Sometimes i wonder would i be better off out on the sea, than sitting in an office. You can't help whats in the blood.

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I wonder did the legalisation of monofilament nets in the early 90s have any thing to do with the decline of the salmon. We have all herd about the Spanish and French boats but since the tagging came in the same Spanish and French boats allegedly were used to off load salmon from Irish boats to be landed in foreign ports where salmon tags were not required so these fish were never accounted for in the Irish salmon figures.

I know the bailiffs are very active in the Galway area could that be because of the State owned fishery at the Galway weir but in the more remote areas that you mentioned it seems to me that it is open season all year round, some examples spring to mind in Kerry, hundreds of salmon found in cold store with no tags, an RTV documentary film crew filmed two men in a small boat setting a drift net out of season in full view of the Southern Fisheries Boards office. Back in the 80s my brother was sailing round the Waterford coast in September and got caught up in a mono drift net not once but twice in view of the port of Ring . All this information was past on to authorities at the time but no prosecutions came of it

You are right in saying that the rivers and lakes are not as good as they should be but the water quality is getting better and a lot of work has to be done on the access to all the spawning grounds on all the Irish rivers I like you have no faith in the Irish governments management of the salmon resource. I think your dad could see the writing on the wall back then so he got you a good education but you say that you remain pessimistic, I am not in fact I am very optimistic about the Irish salmon if this amazing fish is given even half a chance it will come back in large numbers for the benefit of all on this island especially our children and grandchildren.

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We already saw the bounce back starting last year..it might fall off in the next season or two as the progeny from 2004,2005,2006 start to return, i don't think those years had great spawning numbers, but when this years spawner's offspring come back, I think we will see what impact the drift netting ban is having..
I saw Salmon in my local river in incredible numbers, my fathers didn't see them like that since the early 80's. Literally every pool had a fish or two, and this is a river you wouldn't look at twice for a fish

I agree!!!

Although 2006 was a good year on the Foyle with a strong back end run, 2007 was great from start to finish and fish where in every pool and stream. Expecting another good year in 2008 and from now on with the D Nets off and the Foyle nets off too we should get stronger and stronger