Summary: | For more than 55 years, data have been collected on the population of pikeEsox lucius in Windermere, first by the Freshwater Biological Association(FBA) and, since 1989, by the Institute of Freshwater Ecology (IFE) of theNERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. During this time the fishingmethodology has been constant although the actual fishing effort has lessenedconsiderably as the rationale behind the programme has changed. The originalaim of the fishery was to reduce pike numbers (Worthington 1950), in order toprotect stocks of brown trout Salmo trutta - for which there was a sportfishery - and stocks of Arctic charr Salvelinus alpinus, which had beenexploited for several centuries by seine netting and a small plumb-line fishery(Kipling 1972, 1984). However, through time this original policy has evolvedinto a population monitoring programme.
|