The salmon are moving up to the spawning beds. The report of the Fisheries Boards tells us that, in the month of September, 314 were caught in the Boyne. How many, you wonder, escaped and by now are well up the tributaries? One of these, a few years ago, was reported by a fisheries expert to have something over 150 redds, as the places of spawning are called, in its 10 miles or so of length. Those were the days. And even better days for the curious if not the angler. Before the devastating drainage scheme, when this particular stream flowed near the level of the fields around it, rather than in a deep canyon (slight exaggeration), you could walk the banks and actually see the pair of salmon go through the whole process, ending with the covering of the eggs with gravel by broad sweeps of the fish's tail.
Anyway, this year ended with an unusual appearance of good numbers of sea trout, too, on the east coast: the Glyde, the Fane, the Dee. We have our woes. So do other countries. A columnist in the Journal de Gen- eve weeps for the state of salmon angling in France. Two of its greatest rivers, the Gave d'Oloron and the Allier, have been devastated. "The future of the salmon in France is seriously threatened. An absolute disaster." The cause? In both cases, the amount of fish taken by netsmen in the estuaries - fish which are bound for the spawning beds and the continuation of the breed. In the case of the Allier, it is further complicated by the fact that where dams have been built for hydro-electric schemes, not enough provision has been made for fish passes. Writes the columnist, who had recently been to see the Allier: "Where, in the past, a hundred thousand would gather at the Loire estuary to make for the Allier, now a few dozen might get through to the upper reaches." Imagine, he says, after a voyage of 1,000 kilometres in the river and 5,000 kilometres in the sea (right to Greenland).
Certain measures have been taken, including a ban on angling, but the prospects are not good. And there is always pollution of various kinds. But the Allier in the Auvergne and the Gave d'Oloron, the latter having been in decades past a great draw for English anglers and even anglers from Scotland. A continuing story, the slow extinction of the wild king of the sea. Y