This may be of  interest to anyone fishing the Ebro and maybe the kiss of death to the guides who are scratching a living here. The Catalan authorities have had a pilot scheme running over a 2 week period with the intention of eradicating the Wels catfish ( Silur ) and other fish - Zander , Pike and american bass.
The area so far covered the lower reaches and led to the killing of 327 fish including 74 catfish. It seems the outcome will be a full scale elimination project of these species. Anyone with a better understanding than myself of Catalan/Spanish would be better informed by reading the article in DIARI EBRE local newspaper of 24th October. If anyone has any further information could they post it on this forum please ?

Trying to wipe out a species ( wels catfish ) will not work but will balls up the fishing and ruin the economy of a lot of small business built round the fishing for years. The Americans have spent billions of dollars trying to wipe out the migration of Bighead ,Asian and Silver carp from getting to the Great Lakes from the Mississipi river system and are failing badly. Physical and electric barriers,netting , poisons, you name it. All have failed. The water companies in the UK tried to eradicate Zander years ago and also failed .The return of the native Barbel and other species would only be temporary as the Catfish and others at the top of the food chain are sure to return in the future.
To add insult to injury I am told the fish that are slaughtered are being frozen and sent to Romania as food . Not entirely wasted but a few euros in someones back  pocket.
 Why dont they just try and control the numbers ie put the big ones back ( the large ones dont taste nice at all so I'm told) and market the smaller ones.

Just recieved this email from a local fishing guide and have asked their permission to put it on here.I cant comment on how accurate it is so....dont shoot the messanger.


Hi everyone
can i ask you a great favour, we have heard that the Generallitat of
Catalunya has EU backing to cull catfish and carp from the whole
lenght of the lower ebro right upto the border with spain in the
province of Aragon this is being done because they are not native
species to the ebro river, the carp were introduced approx 2000 years
ago by the Romans and the catfish in 1973 by Germans, the Generallitat
have just run a pilot scheme on the lower ebro where 73 catfish were
caught or speargunned by Romanians that are employed by the
generallitat to carry out the cull, they are now going to start
netting the river useing large cone nets and all catfish and carp
caught will be frozen and sent to Romania for food as part payment for
the cull, many people i have spoken to think this is an ill conceived
plan with many flaws which i will list below.
1 who will police the Romanians to see that they are not taking fish
that are native to the river.
2 fish that are caught in the nets that are native to the river will
probably suffer injury by having their heads/gills caught in the nets
or be crushed by larger fish.
3 what will happen when someone is injured or dies as a result of
running a boat into one of these nets which someone nearly did at the
3k mark a few weeks ago where she ended up cutting a strong cord
holding a net this was done to stop a serious accident happening with
another boat in low light conditions.
4 if the catfish are culled in large numbers this will result
eventually in a huge drop in fishermen coming to Catalunia that will
instead go into Spain where they are not affected by this  proposed
large scale cull this will result in a dramatice drop in fishing
licence revenue and also tourism.
5 there have been no proposals put forward by the generallitat as to
what plans they have to re-populate the river with native species
which would take years and years to end up with a river that is
prolific as it is now and would fishermen come back to the river
probably no as the main target species fo anglers from the UK is the
catfish and then carp.

Can i ask you all to send an email to the following wesite of the
generallitat of catalunya which is  gencat.cat/index_eng.htm then go
into contact at top of the page then into contact us then go into the
drop down menu to subject agriculture. cattle raising, fishing and
then type in your disapproval listing some of your complaints if
enough people complain perhaps they may take notice if you can forward
this email to your friends who will also complain this will help
enormously
kindest regards

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Not for much longer If I have got anything to do with it!!

All the crappy old Carobs are being masacred too this year, as they are worth more as firewood than for a crop thanks to the cheap morrocan carobs

See the link where the Catalan government are trying to redress a 30% drop in tourism to the Catalunya area with a europe wide promotional exercise http://www.gencat.cat/turistex_nou/Premsa/Angl/NP_CAMPANYA_INTERNACIONAL_ang.pdf

Spending a total of 1.3,000,000 euros to promote tourism to the area with mentions of Golf and Gastronomy, but alas no mention of sports and fishing so I think they are missing a trick but then thats nothing new is it!!

Whats up with fishing? is it too working class for the Barcelonians? or is it that they don't have a decent river themselves

Cooking the goose that layed the golden egg!!
Closing the gate after the horse has bolted!!
Cutting ones nose off to spite ones face come to mind

But are they aware that they have tried similar fish culling exercises in the USA spending 50,000,000 dollars and at the end of the day having no success at all

Reminds me of a quote from the film Jurasic Park!! Life will find a way

And in a final note they are trying to promote autumn and winter tourism to the area outiside the summer season
Is it me or is the best fishing about this time of the year?

After a recent trip to the Aragon area of the Ebro there is no possibility of the authorities there following Catalunya's lead in trying to eliminate certain species of fish. In fact they are promoting the area for fishing and tourism and are quite happy to welcome the trade that our area will lose. They issued nearly 70,000 licences this year and are confident of reaching 100,000 next year, a vast number if these are for visiting anglers and families. How many millions of tourist euros will now be spent in Aragon and not Catalunya is anyones guess. As their GREEN argument for the slaughter is no longer valid ( natural fish migration ) the only reason must be a nice earner for a very few people. What a waste .On the subject of waste I would like to draw attention to the fact that the fish mentioned contain alarming quantities of mercury and should not be going back in the food chain . It seems that Catalunya are happy enough for this to happen as some of these these fish will end up back in the food chain one way or another. There is also the problem of the 700,000 tonnes of toxic mud in our area of the Ebro that has not been dealt with. If you put "TOXIC CATFISH"  into your search engine you will see how serious this is --- look for the "nowpublic" article !

Or go onto WWW nowpublic website and search for toxic catfish !!
google search .....its about the 4th one down if you search toxic catfish----no problem to find !
If anyone hasn't got a clue what this is about -------go back a page on this forum.

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Just thought this subject was too important to be lost in a war of words .
I've met some great people here in Catalunya but like all polititions the decision makers have made a balls up again. A U turn on the fish cull would solve one of the issues.
And the beaches in Catalunya are much better !