"Do I call you Colonel, Sir?" asked the boatman as your friend was settling down on his way to catch salmon or trout on a western lake. "No," said our man. "I never rose from the ranks when I was in the Irish Volunteers." That was when Connemara teemed with salmon and white trout a long time ago. The picture or caricature of that area in the season was that colonels and other folk from the English gentry seemed to form a good part of our tourist trade. Today we have our fish farms and fewer and fewer salmon returning to spawn in their native rivers. You ask your local non-colonel friends on the phone: "Got any yet?" - meaning one thing only, a salmon. Two eager youngish men have had not one fish (a couple of days to go). Another angler who devotes considerable time to his river has had 10 so far. Good for him. He is noted for success in all he undertakes. And modest withal. So our salmon are gone from the rivers and lakes? Some gloom from the West, but pick up the latest bulletin of the Central and Regional Fisheries Boards, which reports on its cover "Specimen salmon of 27.5lbs reported from the river Suir." Also good salmon fishing from the rivers Laune, Feale, Moy and Finn. Then on to the east coast where Jimmy McCabe had three salmon on the river Glyde and a fisheries officer also named Jimmy McCabe caught six salmon on the River Dee. One of 14lbs. That's one big fish. Down in Kerry they were having good hauls - 30 salmon were reported (sorry, "officially returned") from Tralee Club waters over 10 days. And in the North-western Region, where action had slumped due to heavy flooding, anglers on the Ballina area stretch were reported as averaging three salmon each. Overall from the Moy, 270 salmon for the week.
Many more incidents of successful angling in all regions. There was the six-year old Terence Caffrey of Gort a Gleanna down in Kerry, who caught a salmon and must be the angler of the week. "Showing composure belying his young age, Terence handled the operation from the moment of the take to a speedy dispatch on the river bank with the aplomb of a seasoned angler." As to what is known as coarse angling, tench, bream and pike are giving themselves up in vast numbers. One visiting angler is noted as taking 100lbs of bream at Coosan, Athlone. What fun French fishing magazines have in telling their readers not only how to catch but how to cook, in various ways, their haul.