Native trout in danger of being wiped out by chub
Chub, a popular coarse fishing species in Britain, has already wiped out native trout on one of the most popular trout fisheries in Co. Westmeath.
The problem poses such a threat to other trout waterways that the Minister for the Marine, Noel Dempsey, will next month introduce emergency legislation to prevent the introduction of chubb to Irish trout waterways.
Yesterday, the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board warned that the unauthorised introduction of the British species of coarse fish was threatening the trout population in the Shannon system.
The board’s fisheries inspectors have discovered large quantities of the fish in the River Inny in Co Westmeath where it has already destroyed one of the most popular trout fishing waterways in the country.
The fisheries inspectors are blaming British anglers for bringing chub into the country.
Mr Matt Nolan, fisheries inspector, explained that the chub will eat small trout and also compete for habitat with mature trout, eventually driving them out.
“When chub and trout are side by side competing for habitat, the chub will always win,” he said.
The board say the species, which was only to be found up to now in British waters, is impacting on trout near hatcheries and lake systems here. Irish angling groups say the chub are wiping out stocks of trout introduced to the Shannon system through hatcheries at a cost of more than 10,000.
Native Irish coarse fish are recognised as providing excellent angling quarry. While coarse fishing is not as popular as game fishing for salmon and trout, specimen anglers have long fished Irish waterways where bream, pike and tench are never in short supply.
Irish coarse fish species, which include stocks of roach and rudd, do not compete with trout.
From next month the Minister for the Marine will put a blanket ban on the introduction of any non-Irish species of fish.
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