Time for a Cormorant Cull
While having another blank at Barcraigs today i did a quick Cormorant count. On Barcraigs i counted 14 on a small island, all standing about, no doubt too heavy to fly seeing as their guts were full of trout that i have paid for. On Rowbank there were another 6 or 7, fishing away stuffing their bellys full of the stockies put in a couple of weeks ago. A Cormorant eats at least 1lb of fish per day and they dont go hungry, all that flying and swimming requires a lot of energy so its just as well that they are extremely efficient fish predators. Now let me see, thats 20 Cormorants @ 20lbs of fish per day, 7 days a week. Lets suppose that only 50% of that fish is Trout and the rest Perch, that means that at the least, possibly 70lbs of trout is dissappearing down the throats of these filthy black vermin, every week. Lets just suppose that the stock trout went into Rowbank six weeks before the opening of the season. This means that there is the potential for these birds to have eaten somewhere from 400 to 800 trout out of the pre season stocking, before the members have had a chance to cast a fly at them. Its time that these birds were not just culled, they should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. The numbers of these birds just seems to keep increasing and no wonder, they are thriving on a high protein diet of stock trout paid for by angling clubs up and down this land. We need a national programe of total extermination carried out against these birds. Why they are protected by the law defies understanding. If you go down to the coast you will see plenty of them, they are literally as common as muck and thats where they should be, on the coast not living the easy life on our trout lochs at our expense. Kill them all thats what i say and ill certainly slaughter any that i can get my hands on.
