Salmon anglers are to picket the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis in Killarney, Co Kerry, next month to protest at the Government's failure to ban drift net fishing, which is depleting stocks.
The protest by "Stop Salmon Drift Nets Now" is expected to attract hundreds of anglers from all over the State, Northern Ireland and Britain, spokesman Vincent Duignan said yesterday.
The number of foreign anglers visiting has plummeted since 1999, while many hotels and B&Bs in traditional fishing locations have this year reported their worst ever season.
Game fishermen want the Government to end salmon drift net fishing at sea by buying out licences.
"Successive governments have paid excessive attention to the organised voice of those commercial interests who have almost obliterated the salmon from our rivers," said the angling lobby group.
"Stop Salmon Drift Nets Now" was set up in July to campaign for an end to drift netting which, it claimed, is "the single largest threat to the survival of the Atlantic salmon".
"Over the years there has been a great deal of campaigning by individual national and regional organisations on the drift netting issue. For the first time there is now a single authoritative voice on the subject embracing not just anglers but all those who have a stake in salmon conservation.
"Now there is a countervailing voice representing salmon anglers, fishery owners, who are often significant employers in remote areas, and hotels and guest houses, who are even more significant employers," said the lobby group.
The angling groups presented a buyout plan to Minister of State for the Marine Pat "The Cope" Gallagher in July, which would be half-funded by the State and by angling and tourist interests. "The plan has remained sitting on his desk since then, even though he asked us for it in June," Mr Duignan said.
There are just 877 drift net licence-holders, in the State, who catch up to 150,000 salmon annually during peak seasons, though they are concentrated in Waterford, east Cork and Donegal.
"There is also a moral and legal argument in that drift netting not only exploits salmon running into Irish rivers but also those of the river systems of England, Wales, France, Spain and Germany," the campaign claimed.
"The conservation and scientific arguments in favour of ending this form of exploitation of mixed-stock fisheries are now firmly and incontrovertibly established," it added.
