THIS year's catch on the Moy river has broken all records, and anglers have reeled in some 12,305 salmon, according to Mr Vincent Roche who, as chief officer for the North West Fisheries Board, is in charge of one of Ireland's prime salmon rivers.
Galway fishermen are hauling in the whiting by the bucketful, says Mr Brian Casburn, manager of the Galway and Aran Fishermen's Co op. "This year we've had the biggest landing of whiting in 22 years."
While along the east coast the stocks of herring which dropped during the 1970s from overfishing are making a good recovery.
The stock is fished almost exclusively by Irish fishermen, unlike that for whitefish species off the south west coast which provokes so much confrontation with Spanish fishermen. Scientists are much more hopeful about the future for the east coast herring stock than they were 10 years ago.
The above facts are completely unrelated, chosen at random to remind the reader of the complexities involved in any discussion about fishing. The sea remains a great unfathomable mystery and we still know very little about how it works. Anyone who says otherwise - Eurocrat, scientist, conservationist or fisherman - is just fooling around.
What we do know is that the fishing industry is in a bad way, and has been for a long number of years. The proposal for large scale, across the board cuts in EU fleets, regardless of social or economic factors, is a further blow to an Irish industry that has suffered years of hamfisted interventions from Brussels and decades of benign neglect at home.
The initial proposal for cuts of up to 40 per cent was unceremoniously dumped by EU fisheries ministers last week, but a more modest proposal may be cobbled together in advance of renewed discussions on November 22nd.
Agreement on this political hot potato is unlikely then, which leaves the traditional Christmas horse trading over quotas complete with all night sessions smoke filled rooms - as the most substantial EU intervention in the industry this year.
In the meantime, fishermen around the coast are united in anger at the Department of the Manne's choice of priorities for "the Irish Presidency of the EU. These focus on conservation, control and enforcement measures, and overfishing. The fishermen say one of the biggest problems they have - Spanish "quota hoppers" fishing Irish waters in large UK registered boats - has been ignored by the Department.
The assistant secretary at the Department, Ms Sara White, "totally refutes" the charge that the issue is not "at the top of the Department's agenda". But she "adds that, to a large extent, the agenda for the Irish presidency is already set by the time it takes cover. The most pressing issue is agreement on fleet cuts, she says, as a previous agreement is due to expire at the end of the year.
The Government's position on the industry is unchanged: Ireland is entitled to a greater share of fish quotas than it now has. But she says there is "no political support" for the Irish case at EU level and dismisses as "not a runner" suggestions that the Common Fisheries Policy should be revised.
According to Mr Tom Hassett of the Irish South and West Fishermen's Organisation, the Department missed a golden opportunity to raise the central grievance of the industry: it was shortchanged on quotas when Ireland joined the Common Market and nothing much has happened since to redress the imbalance.
The Republic has 16 per cent of EU waters, 5 per cent of the quotas and 2.5 per cent of the EU fleet. Irish fishermen catch about £100 million worth out of a total estimated catch worth some £2 billion a year, he says.
This latter figure includes the total legal catch of £700 million. ,It is a sobering thought that a fishermen's organisation says twice as much again is being filched from Irish waters.
Mr Hassett says it is ironic that Irish fishermen have to look to Britain to get support for their demands for action on the "quota hoppers". The British have adopted a tough stance: they will not consider any compulsory reduction in the UK fleet until the issue is resolved.
A further irony is that last January 40 large all weather Spanish boats were granted the right to fish within the "Irish Box" up to 12 miles from the coast.
The box was set up in 1986 when Spain and Portugal joined the then EC and covers a huge area off the south west, west and north west coasts.
The box was recognised, at the time, as a sensitive area because of the large number of spawning and nursery grounds within it. It was also felt there was a need to protect fish stocks from the huge Spanish fleet and safeguard the much smaller Irish industry.
The effects of the new dispensation were quickly felt in ports such as Castletownbere, Co Cork. One skipper reported watching 22 Spanish vessels fishing 15 miles south west of Mizen Head. The ISWFO uses incidents like this to support its claims that politics, not conservation, lies at the heart of EU policy on fishing.
In Donegal Dr Peter Tyndall, manager of the Foyle Fisherman's Co op in Greencastle, says that although the big mackerel boats in Killybegs are doing well, the smaller whitefish fleet is hampered by aging vessels and poor returns for fishing effort.
"Our big failure has been our own governments. They have failed the country, because we know that fishing could be a huge employer and a huge contributor to the Irish Exchequer," he says.
In Ros a Mhil, in Connemara, Mr Brian Casburn is more emphatic. He says talk of fleet reductions, given Ireland's poor existing share of the quota, is absurd. "As far as we're concerned you can forget about it. We've been struggling to work to the quotas we've got," he says.
He sees little future in the industry for young fisherfolk, who face huge capital outlays to get started, long hours and heavy, physical and often dangerous work on the high seas. "If you, think you can go out and fish for two boxes of cod a week and three boxes of haddock, you're joking."