Protest culling

                                By Steef Meijers
                             ‘Dé Roofvis’

                                                     Utrecht, March 13th 2000

Dear Sir, Madam,

As editor in chief of the of ‘Dé Roofvis’, the leading magazine on predatory fishing in the Netherlands, I want to express by this letter my deepest concerns about what is (again) happening in Ireland.

Various organisations and persons have contacted me that pike culling is currently and again carried out on the western lakes, Mask, Corrib and Carra. As a magazine that - amongst every other action that is taken to preserve good fishing now and in the future - promotes catch and release in sportsfishing the readers and I cannot approve with the horrible practice of pike culling in Ireland. Although many of the readers of Dé Roofvis love to fish in your country and Dé Roofvis really wants to promote fishing in Ireland – several articles are allready published in this magazine – with pain in my heart I have to stop again publishing articles on fishing in Ireland. My readers would loose confidence in Dé Roofvis as a critical magazine if I would do otherwise.

Still I keep wondering. After so many protests now and in the past and despite of the fact that it is proven that pike culling does not help the trout stocks in the western lakes in any way, pike culling is still carried out by the Central and Regional Fisheries Boards. And by doing so they chase away many good and experienced anglers that will travel to other countries. In fact several editors of Dé Roofvis and myself – all of us in former years travelled to Ireland - since two years have decided to travel to Sweden to fish for pike as a result of pike culling with gillnets carried out by the Fisheries Boards.

For the sake of pike itself and good fishing in Ireland I therefore again want to ask you to stop this horrible and complete useless way of ‘stock management’ and use the money to stop pollution and to do something about the damaged spawning streams for trouts. Clearly except for the Fisheries Boards everyone is convinced that that is the way to save the trout stocks in the western lakes.

A worried editor in chief,

Steef Meijers

   SOWL