Sir, The French have their eye on us. A discriminating people, especially when it comes to matters of food. And food that comes from sporting activities.
Thus, one of their magazines quotes an official figure that in one year 255 000 adult trout were eaten by pike in Corrib alone. And in all the famous limestone lakes of the west. (Corrib, Mask, Carra etc), trout fishing has been in decline for ten years, since the pike population ceased to be kept strictly under control.
This year, says the magazine Le Chasseur Franca is, for March, a budget of three million pounds has been allocated to restore the salmonid habitat and to destroy the pike. (Well, the pike are not going to be destroyed, but transferred to other lakes, non trout lakes.) Anyway, says the magazine, the trout fishermen, basically Irish and English, are delighted, but the same reaction doesn't come from the pike fishers, Germans, Dutch and French. And, the article goes on seeing that three quarters of the budget for this scheme comes from Brussels, the said pike fishers are threatening to boycott Irish waters, if the fisheries persist in a campaign of destroying the pike.
And the Chasseur informs us, or reminds us, that the pike were accidently introduced into these lakes, which, in the 60s and 70s were considered as probably the finest lakes for wild trout in the world. Indeed, Paul Bourke of the Central Fisheries Board, says that, officially, Ireland has twelve out of the thirteen officially designated wild trout lakes of Europe. The other one is Lough Leven in Scotland. The French need not worry too much. Already pike are being removed from the trout lakes and transferred to other coarse fish habitats, where the French and Germans and Dutch can have their sport and their dinners.
And pike is good eating. In this country we have been slow to break with the old idea that it was somehow unwholesome. In various parts of the continent, a grand buffet may have as centre piece a fine pike. And does anyone remember in the early days of what was then the Inland Fisheries Trust, how you could come across heaps of dead perch or other coarse fish, as lakes were cleansed for the greater glory of the trout?
The editors of Le Chasseur Francais, can sleep easier now. Both sides are being catered for.