after reading the post about migratory browns and pike, I thought I might bring up our club experience , we have 2 lochs with pike in them stocked in Victorian times, as far as I can gather, the lochs are a closed system, being now a hydro scheme, although the down stream penstock has some pike in it, we tried many years back to net out the larger pike with large mesh gill nets, but we also took some specimen trout so we shelved that, we did notice that larger trout took small pike, it is a loch /lochs that have some decent trout, we have stocked it with trout from the Aviemore trout farm , but it was obvious we were just feeding pike, so we now leave it, although we have a hankering to stock some trout from another loch on the same system, well above the pike lochs, I was at the new fishery
initiative meeting, and one of the Inverness pike club men was there complaining about the Killing of pike and what could be done about it, also at the meeting was the chairman of the local salmon fishery board,he told the guy that,as these were none native invasive predators they had to be killed,and not returned to the water. I read Allans bit on Lochs Roisque and luichart, this is a massive system containing also Loch Achanalt the river Brahn, Lochs Crann, Fhialeaih ,and Moine mhor,covering about 20 miles, and probably well able to cope with the pike population, where as the other places Mentioned have quite closed systems , and are not able to cope so well with pike .I have the feeling that our local system struggles, but we are stuck with it,There was a rumour that some one had taken pike up to another local loch but we set some live traps and produced nothing, so there are those that a quite happy to do this
we must be on our guard , there are already minnows in places where they shouldn't be , competing with small trout fry for feed,
easgach 1