The Minister for the Marine owns the fishing rights in the estuaries of the Owenduff and Owenmore rivers. Twenty-five special local draft net licences are issued by the Regional Fisheries Board in respect of the estuarial fisheries.
A short stretch of the tidal waters of the Owenduff River is regarded as free. The fisheries upstream of the estuarial fisheries on the Owenduff and Owenmore rivers are for the most part privately owned. Details of the ownership of such fisheries and of legal transactions affecting such ownership may be investigated in the Land Registry and the Registry of Deeds.
Neither the Central Fisheries Board nor the North Western Regional Fisheries Board owns any of these fisheries. The Irish Land Commission owns a fishery on the Owenmore comprising part of the Muing River, the Oweninny River and a portion of Lake Dahybaun. (Land Commission fisheries are managed by the Central Fisheries Board.) This has been let to a local hotelier by the Central Fisheries Board on behalf of the Irish Land Commission. This licence expires on 31 December 1997.
I understand from the Central Fisheries Board that Carrowmore Lake on the Owenmore River is a State lake.
The North Western Regional Fisheries Board has general responsibility for the protection, conservation, improvement and development of inland fisheries in, among other areas, the Mayo region.
