Damaged pike

By 10^th march 1999, the Western Regional Fisheries Board of Ireland who are responsible for the gillnetting operations on the Great Western Lakes, have, according to their own published figures, tagged and released in excess of 4900 pike to Summerville Lake and other small waters. This
without disclosing the true facts to us concerned (or conservation-minded) anglers as to just how badly injured most of these transferred pike are and will die shortly after transfer. 

On this video-evidence you can see a pike discovered along the margins of Summerville Lake on the afternoon of Thursday, 4^th february 1999. The fish was alive when lifted from the lake for examination. 

The fish exhibits classical gillnet damage-i.e. large areas of the protective slime and skin have been scraped away by the lethal mesh material of the gillnet. The raw wounds have become colonised by saprolegnia (sp.) fungus, the tail fin and the caudal peduncle (tail wrist) has been shredded, and the skin between the rays of the tail fin lobes completely destroyed. Also, the lens of the eye is clouded over due to severe damage to the eye from friction burns caused when the head of the pike was
entangled in the meshes of this deadly gillnet. 

Judge for yourselves the callous and uncaring way that the Western Regional Fisheries Board (W.R.F.B.) treat all fish in the way that they tagged and released this mortally wounded pike in order to deceive us and by doing so, create another "transfer statistic".