Warning! Coming to a river near you soon!
A petition to stop the hydro madness.
Please forward this to as many people as possible before it is too late.
Please help us save our salmon! Sign our petition demanding that the Northern Ireland Minister for the Environment suspend all hydroelectric schemes immediately and order an independent scientific review of their impact on the aquatic ecosystems.
We are aware for the need for renewable energy but it should not be at the cost of destroying the already declining and fragile salmon, freshwater eel and sea lamprey populations.
CLICK LINK TO SIGN PETITION ONLINE –
May
07
Sign Our Petition Now, Save our rivers and our Salmon
May
07
Mc Bride Cup and Courtney Cup
Calling all members.
Don’t forget the annual trout fishing competitions. This year they will be on the 27th May 2012. Sign in will be at Campsie Loughs Agency offices in Omagh from 13.30 to 14.30.
Weigh in will be at the same place with all anglers weighed in before 22.00(ten o’clock that evening). Any angler after this time will not be allowed to enter their trout in the weigh in.
May
07
Council refuse to give breakdown of costs!
I have received this latest email from Omagh District Council. After recent press reports and the Chief Executive stating that the hydro was going to be an enhancement in terms of fishery interests I asked for a detailed breakdown of what enhancement works had occurred and a detailed cost analysis. It was not forthcoming .
Apr
21
Mar
24
Cost Of Council Hydro electric Scheme on the Camowen reaches almost £1.2 million
I am sure this may come as a bit of a shock to many but the information below left me quite bewildered. The council to date have spent almost £1.2 million on the hydro. As you can see from the email, money was spent on enhancing the river although myself and the Loughs Agency have searched to find where this was but to no avail. £360,000. came from grant money but the rest approx £840,000. is rate payers contributions. How can this be allowed with out permission. It seems like another white elephant similar to the Gortin History Park. I urge all anglers and their family members to enquire from their local elected representative why they allowed this to happen.
Mar
16
Omagh Hydro, new picture of shoaling and dry weirs
- Now what Mr Salmon, where to now?
You all will probably have seen pictures of the upper section shown here, with plenty of water flowing through it. The picture here shows what happened when the water was diverted to the hydro. There was nothing left to go over the weirs and it shows the full extent of the shoaling and also that the plinth that the council construction engineers placed on the steps is actually just hanging in mid air.
How is anything supposed to survive in this and how are smolts supposed to move downstream with no water in this area. as I stated earlier contact your local Councillor/MLA and ask them to do something about this.
Click on the picture to see the full extent of this act of environmental vandalism. The picture on the right is part of a presentation that I gave to local coucillors in the Council Chambers in 2008 . I thought that I was giving worse case scenario, I wasn’t even close!!!
Mar
15
When the hydro was turned on!!!!
The Council hydro was tested out today. The result as we all knew it would be, was, two dry weirs , fish caught floundering in small pools and grey crows and herons having a feast. Note this area shown is below the weirs and the Loughs Agency officer was able to cross the area in a pair of wellington boots. A quote from the guy testing the system goes something like this,
‘ is this causing a problem? ‘. It took ten minutes for the area to be void of water and we have people telling us that the hydro scheme will not really affect the flow. There is no flow now through the dewatered area!! Water levels dropped by approx wo feet . Who cares, not our Council and definetly not the Northern Ireland Environment Agency. I ask you all to contact your local Councillor and MLA , tell tem of this atrocity and ask them what are they going to do now to protect our fish?
Click on the image to see the full disgracefullness of this situation!!
Mar
13
The 2012 Season
Firstly, I have had a response from the Loughs Agency re the nets on the Foyle system. . There are no nets operating on the Foyle at the minute due to the River Finn still being Catch and Release. There are stil approx 28 licensed netsmen but all netting is suspended. No Compensation is being paid to the suspended netsmen although there was a one of payment to approx 130 netsmen back in 2007 . Those that accepted the payment are no longer able to net and those that didn’t take the payment ie the 28 legal netsmen will not get any payment unless there is another voluntary buyout!!
This year on Omagh Anglers Association waters it has been decided that Anglers are recommended to use only 1 blue tag and 5 black tags in the interests of Conservation of salmon. Catch and release methods should be used after this. As Anglers we have a duty of care to try and help declining salmon numbers. With this in mind all Omagh Anglers Association waters will this year close on the 10th of October 2012. We respectfully ask all members to abide with the clubs recommendations to try and assist in turning around the massive fall in salmon numbers in our systems.
I wish all anglers a succesful year and hope that our measures may help in some way to stop the decline.
Feb
27
Omagh Anglers AGM 23 February 2012
Secretary’s Report
The 2011 season was a difficult season for many with a lot of
anglers stating how few fish were present in the system. The counters are again
ineffective at producing reliable figures and only 1197 were counted through
Sion Mills by November.
The annual competitions were well supported with almost 50
anglers turning up to fish on the day. This was one of the best turnouts over
the last number of years and some fantastic trout were caught on the day. A lot
of time and effort is put into organising these competitions and members are
asked to publicise and support them. The trout fishing in our system is
excellent with many reasonable size trout being caught throughout the season.
Feb
16
AGM 23rd February 2012
Don’t forget the AGM is on next week the 23rd February in Omagh Library at 7.30pm sharp. All members are welcome but the meeting is open only to members. Please come along , show your support for your club and help produce future policy for Omagh Anglers Association. This will be the 69th AGM .
We will have the Loughs Agency present for questions and also outlining future policy. They may even tell why they have not reduced the number of tags issued to anglers as we suggested. I can only ask all anglers to show some form of control and help the future of salmon in our rivers by not using all tags available and making their returns to the Loughs Agency in a timely fashion.
