An Irish Angler's World

Sadly, and with great frustration I have to report that illegal poaching of coarse fish is occurring yet again on the lower River Barrow. Maybe the practice never went away, with the perpetrators adjusting their action plans under pressure from water keepers and Fisheries staff to become more covert and discrete.  Who knows, one thing is certain however they are back and the evidence was very clear to yours truly yesterday evening while putting in a spot of feeder fishing at a favourite Co. Carlow venue. To make matters worse they couldn’t have been more brazen and their actions spoiled for this writer a very enjoyable and relaxing evening.

Timing my arrival to fish a rising tide into dusk with bream and hybrids in mind, I set up a 40 gram feeder with a meter long tail to a size 14 kamazan. Baiting with four red maggot cast thirty meters into a still fast flowing river, letting the feeder settle then retrieving and refilling plugged with maggots every sixty seconds, by the forth cast bites commenced. First off a nice plump hybrid followed by a couple of equally plump roach. Large dace entered the swim for a while accompanied by an odd trout and as it got dark small flounder. Make no mistake this is some fishery which makes the latter part of this post all the more annoying.

Chatting to a lady walking the tow path she pointed to a passing car while asking, “does catch and release apply here“? Relative to species bye laws, I replied, but that most responsible anglers do tend to put fish back, especially the coarse fish. “Well I observed the occupants of that car fishing yesterday evening, she said, they were clearly filling a bucket with small silver fish”. Asking, were they Eastern European, the lady answered in the affirmative.

Not fifty meters up from me two more of our Eastern European brethren were setting up, a keep net nowhere to be seen, which is always a likely sign in my experience that fish will be kept. Finishing my session and all packed up around ten pm, it now black dark, I sauntered over towards the lads interested in how they were doing. “Are you catching guys?” “Small trout” came the dour monosyllabic response, the two blokes keeping their backs to me, not turning to engage. Flicking on my head lamp, right in the beam lying on the bank a big plump, full of spawn, dead roach. “So what’s that then?”

Of course you all know what follows, the usual excuses; we didn’t know, cannot speak English, etc, etc. Pointing out that circa 2013 I’d heard it all before and what they were uttering was garbage, that they well knew the rules, and given they were driving a 06 Wexford reg’ beamer, it was quite obvious that they had been in Ireland a while, so cut the crap. A few more expletives and home truths were proffered before I made my exit letting them know I had their reg and was going to forward it to the fisheries board.

A sad end to a grand day. The implications though for the fishery in question are serious and IFI and Waterways Ireland really need to get their act together on this sinister development, lack of funding and staff shortages being no excuse for real action. A good start would be to contact the local community and set up an education programme while also empowering local water keepers. Please get on the case and feel free to contact this soldier too, I’m happy to put my two pence halfpenny in the mix…….