In article , matthew walker
wrote:
Hi All,

I've been fishing some of my regular locations on the river Trent. There has
been an influx of Polish people to the area recently. When I have been
fishing they are polite and interested in fishing methods, but are taking
pike from the river. They have licenses and are legal, but feel that they
are eroding the pike stock in the Trent. This is not the odd pike, they are
being hammered. Is this legal?

I don't know your area's bylaws - your fishery office will let you have a
copy on request - and the rules for each fishery may have to applied on top.

I have concerns for the future of pike in the
Trent!

....but don't worry on that score. Many game fisheries used to try to
eradicate pike from their waters and none ever succeeded. You only need to
retain a few females in the headwaters or some forgotten backwater and
you'll have many thousand replacement fry the next year.

The most likely result, if large fish are taken out, is that there will be
a population boom over the next couple of years as the jacks that were the
prey of the big females suddenly have no predator...

As it happens the best eating size is around 7lb btw.

As a consequence you will have greater predation among the middle sized
silver fish and this in turn will allow faster growth as the competition for
wild foods diminishes. There may be a few years confusion but the end
result - as the pike stocks return to max when the harvesting slows down,
will be a few year classes of relatively *large* specimens and a better
distribution of sizes.

We tend to forget that naturally there should be much more predation in our
rivers by bears, fish-eagles, storks, otters and others. It isn't healthy
for a river ecosystem never to have large, old, fish removed - they block
the growth path for their replacements. The very biggest fish are those
which were able to grow quickly as well as large, which means there must not
be too much competition from their own kind.

Cheerio,

--
Fishing: http://www.fishing.casterbridge.net/
Writing: http://www.author.casterbridge.net/derek-moody/
uk.rec.fishing.game Badge Page:
http://www.fishing.casterbridge.net/urfg/