What's wrong with the IFI?

 Uninsured motors on the road, board members leasing out state owned properties! I have even heard through the grapevine that green tags were sold allegedly back to draft net fishermen when they no longer had quota left. The whole fish counter saga on the river Maine is a complete injustice and also the lies that have been told by the IFI for not 2 years but 20 years is unforgivable. Over 500 illegal salmon caught in a warehouse in south Kerry in 2006 was another complete fraud and has stunk since but it's not forgotten. All these things are rotten from the top down but I am gonna tell you what's really wrong from the ground up. 

Inland Fisheries Ireland, Equal Opportunity Employers

So I am gonna tell you two stories one from a few weeks ago and one from a few years ago. The first story goes like this, I am meeting a friend of mine to fish Stradbally beach in hope of a few bass. Now needless to say nobody knows when the open season is and when its not but what does that matter, I practise mostly C&R these days, although I believe you should be allowed kill and eat any fish you catch. I go to Killshanig to dig a few lug and this is where I see two young female fishery officers on their phones in a brand new beach buggy. Later on in the day they hide in the sand dunes hoping that we kill a bass, don't we don't because it's February and we abide by the rules whatever they are. My point is this, the disconnect between anglers and the state body who serve us, is not workable. For some reason the IFI have become authoritarian and that is not the way it's meant to be. The government serves the people and if the people don't know when the open and close season is, then how can they police it? It's a shambles and it's a shamble all the way through, from the very top to the boots on the beach or the river. Fishery officers should be community people, these girls hadn't a clue about bass or where to fish, and I am not being judgemental it's just the truth. I have been meeting fishery officers for years and they get employed straight out of college and some don't know the difference between a sea trout and a bass. Some of the officers who have been around for years are good and have been around the block but these seasonal ones are not fit for purpose. I have always taught a full time local officer should be employed in each area, even if employed through a scheme or something that is not meant to be enforcing the law but a man or women that can be seen and heard. Anglers are not criminals and the majority are good people, we are treated as criminals and it's wrong. You want to change the way the public view the IFI, then maybe employ local people in areas like the Dingle Peninsula and Killarney, have them walk the rivers and lakes, get to know the people and report back on the peoples beliefs and views. Serve us! That's your job. 

Blennerville, Tralee Bay

The second story goes like this. Maybe I have told this one before but I was out running one day along the river Lee in Tralee and I met a fishery officer along the popular river walk. I had been observing salmon and sea trout for a few weeks in the Lee and when the fishery officer saw me stopped looking into the pool near the walk bridge, he came over. In the pool there was sea trout and salmon, maybe 20 sea trout and one or two salmon, he told me they weren't sea trout and definitely not salmon but they were mullet. I asked him where he was from, he said Carlow and I asked him what type of fishing he was into and it was all course fishing and he had never seen a salmon or sea trout before but he had been informed that the river was polluted and no salmon or sea trout were present in the river. A few weeks later I met the same officer back west as I was picking winkles and he was asking me about various rivers he was to inspect but he didn't know where they were. So here is the problem. For some reason the IFI has become a police force and not a state body that serves the people of Ireland. If you read the annual reports it's all about who they caught and where they caught which I may add a lot of the time is not entirely true. The IFI serves the people and protects the inland marine environment. They protect the salmon and sea trout for the people. They protect the bass for the anglers. They have gotten completely lost but it's not entirely their fault because the government itself has got lost. The IFI are actually hated and it shouldn't be that way. It's an us against them mentality and that is not workable.