THERE has been a population explosion of cannibals in Cavan. Teeming, toothy hordes chasing and chomping their frantic siblings. Perch are thriving in their millions in the reedy, lily padded lakes among the Cavan/Monaghan drumlin swarms this summer; and my eight year old son Ben and I chose, unwittingly, to start our angling lives at this very time.
The lakeland of Cootehill, Shercock and Ballybay is an intimate one: no great sweeping panoramas, but weaving roads, little lakes and larger loughs between smooth hillocks, small whin sheltered farms, patchy woods. We had bought a canoe, and this was to be our starter canoeing/boating holiday - as last year had been the climbing starter with a day's assault on a cloudless, vista ringed Ben Bulben.
The canoe - a broad beamed, stable, heavy duty plastic two seater called a Kiwi 2 - was launched through scudding rabbits into Lake Barnagrow, and we paddled off through zipping lines of electric blue and dappled green damsel and dragon flies. We zig zagged our way from shore to shore, island visiting, calling out to cattle drinking knee deep among alders, watching small fry swarm in extraordinary numbers in the warm shallows near reed beds. And every so often there was the "plop!" of a bigger fish falling back into the water.
"We must get a net," said Ben. Next day, on Lough Sillan, he netted perch fry by the hundred at each dip. We met Martin Farrelly, a 12 year old who lives near the northern shore of the lough, and Martin was already a keen fellow for perch and pike: he had filled a tackle box with lures by careful searching of the shallows for gear left and lost by lakeside anglers.
This time it was: "We must get a rod". And so we did, a £17.50 starter set from PJ's tackle and bait shop in Cootehill. Back to the jetty at Laugh Sillan. A few lessons in casting, moving the bail arm, bringing in the spinner, and Ben was away.
And here's the statistic. In his first fishing session, the one to start a lifetime's love of the sport, he caught 35 perch - some of them over a pound. No cheating: I counted them all out and I counted them all back in again. At one point the line snarled up. I cut it and tied it round Ben's wrist while I got on with re setting the rod and reel, and he simply threw the lure out it looked like nothing so much as an anorexic sardine - and hand hauled another dozen in.
Eight casts went by in one stretch, with a fish at every try. We unhooked them all, admired those spiky, collapsible umbrellas of dorsal fins, and sometimes we'd see up to a dozen same sized perch swarm up and surface alongside their captured cousin. "They eat each other," I told Ben. "Fine young cannibals," he said.
The canoe became a craft for sharing after that. More children came to the jetty, jumping and splashing became an alternative to fishing, and then there was exploring the lakeshore and going and having cold drinks. (Did you know that for the sub 12s. Coke is now known as "hyperactive"? As in "Dad, can I have a can of hyperactive. . .
Waterproofed, we'd fish away in the rain. More and more perch were landed, unhooked, personal records were smashed out of slight day after day. And then came the Great Step Up, the moment when the first pike fell to the spinner, it wasn't a big pike, just a little jack, but it was still full of lethal menace. And we looked at pictures in brochures and on the walls of tackle shops of pike so big they slipped over the sides of a grinning angler's embrace and we dreamed of landing such a monster. We learned some jargon, too. We'd pass a lake and agree: "Very pikey, that".
After a few days at the friendly Riverside House farmhouse of Una and Joe Smith one of the excellent spots listed in the kind 96: Farmhouse Accommodation - we moved on to look after ourselves at Mahon Farm House Holidays, a few miles out of Cootehill off the Ballybay road, near Latton and hard by Lake Avaghon (where, incidentally, it's obvious from their spraints that the local otters are very fond of crayfish). Here Joan and Paddy Gibson have created a terrific self catering holiday base, with comfortable, sensibly designed units (all tiled floors, all mod cons, open fires, peace and quiet - "and", cheered Ben, "a television for wet nights!")
The Gibsons advise in their brochure that there is "fishing in abundance locally". Paddy is full of advice and practical help on waters, boats, baits and tackle, and they are full of plans to help develop their Latton district with attractions for the tourist.
We had seen one area in our travels, to the east of Latton, that was heavily wooded with beech and oak. Usually a lot of beech is a sign of a big house and a parkland estate, of course, but these trees have a different history. They had been planted to supply wood for machinery used in the local linen industry, an industry which had its heyday over 150 years ago. Once there were 12 mills here, all water powered; now there are walls of one. We found a waterwheel embedded in the middle of a field.
It is a dream of many in the area, not least Paddy Gibson, to find funding to develop some tangible celebration of this lost industry and way of life - a refashioned mill, perhaps, with machinery, looms, and fair fields full of flax. The trees still stand, however, I was showing Ben the leaves of different varieties of oak. He picked up a slim leaf and wondered: "Maybe this is a diet oak..."
