"It can be said with certainty that the Irish take their folklore far more seriously than some would give them credit for, which has resulted in attempts by a few brave individuals to capture a pieste, in spite of the creature’s fearsome reputation. Shortly after their encounter with a pieste, Fathers Burke, Murray , and Quigly visited Colonel Harry Rice, a resident of the Lough Ree area for many years. In his book, Thanks for the Memory, Colonel Rice had recorded the possibility of a monster living in the local rivers.
"In 1965, another military man, Captain Lionel Leslie, decided to try and bring a pieste to the surface by creating a shock wave through the use of high explosives. On October 16, Captain Leslie ignited five pounds of gelignite in Lough Fadda, near the island where Georgina Carberry had made her own monster sighting. Ten seconds after the blast, a large black object broke the surface and thrashed about in a violent flurry before disappearing back into the depths of the lough. The Reverend Alston and Mrs. Edmund Foyle of Cifden were among the witnesses. Two years later, the captain and his team attempted to snare the pieste by stretching a net across the length of Lough Fadda, but the monster avoided their efforts.
"In 1969, the team moved on to Lough Nahooin, where local farmer Stephen Coyne observed another pieste. Dr. Roy Mackal and the Hon. David James, both of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, joined the search but came up empty-handed. Captain Leslie and his team of intrepid monster-hunters made a final attempt to capture a pieste by dragging large nets through three interconnecting loughs, Auna, Nahooin, and Shanakeever. Unfortunately for the monster-hunters, underwater snags and bad weather hampered their efforts. The pieste remained hidden in the marshes and swamps, well out of reach of its would-be captors."
