perch

A very emotive subject - one very close to my heart as well, having been visiting Ireland to Fish since a schoolboy.

That Angling - not only in Ireland - had declined in recent decades is beyond doubt. But it's not merely the recent influx of Eastern Europeans who can be blamed for this - the damage was started decades ago.
Water abstraction, pollution and the removal of Fish have all taken their toll.
That we see immigrants taking everything they catch away in their dustbin bags is very handy because it gives us all a new 'source' to pin the blame on.
Believe me, on my first visit here many, many years ago I was astounded when a local Co Cavan farmer came down to us at Lough Gowna with a wheelbarrow to collect all the bream in our keepnets - to feed to his pigs!
Needless to say he didn't get any from us!
During the war years meat was very difficult to come by here and fish made up the largest proportion of Irish country-folks' meals (probably townspeople's as well).
What I'm trying to portray is that taking of fish is not a modern phenomenon.

In the seventies we had a lot of (much closer than Eastern) Europeans coming over killing and taking away huge amounts of Pike - enough to almost make them an endangered species. This included netting them and leaving out night lines as well.
Luckily the decline they actually created was what often deterred them from coming again - as the Pike became scarcer it meant they had to search elsewhere for their 'prizes'.

Very little in the way of regulation was ever enforced then - just as it isn't now so turning the 'blind eye' became very much the way it was - and still is.

That English anglers don't come now is more due to the deterioration in both the quality of the fishing but to this can be added the consideration that (apart from in rivers) the English 'Close Season' for coarse fish was removed...our large motivation to come to Ireland every year was to be able to fish for two or three weeks of the three-month ban of fishing in England...that has gone now so many UK anglers don't have that same need.
Now, I'm not suggesting this is a prime reason why UK anglers stay away now - but it is contributory.

We look around for reasons for the current decline in fishing quality in our lakes and rivers - see the Eastern Europeans taking away everything ("NO PRISONERS") and pin the reasons onto them, once again - they are only adding to the demise!

But, if the quality of the fishing was not so comparatively poor now the loss could pass unnoticed, that it doesn't is testimony to how badly our fishing has been permitted to decline.

To the litter problem.
I see this almost every time I go fishing, but believe me it hurts to have to admit that litter from visiting anglers goes back long before the influx of the 'new' immigrants - I hate to think how much rubbish I have collected down the years from English anglers as well!

We have a goodly few Eastern European members here - it would be good to hear things from their perspective as well?

John