"Were you out today?" used to have only one meaning for countless adults and young people around this time of the year. It was one angler to the other after the official opening day of the trout season. That day, in this eastern part of the country, used to be February 15th and it was a date to put almost any other into the second place. Now the lovely rivers of the Boyne system don't open until March 1st, and it galls some people over here to read in the Central and Regional Fisheries Board's official release that excellent sea trout fishing has been going on in the River Bandon, that Lough Corrib has been having the best brown trout fishing for years, not to mention, though it is not quite relevant to this point, that 40 salmon have been reported taken - perhaps not quite the same number as were taken - on the Drowse fishery. Which just goes to show that fishing, especially rod and line fishing, seems to run from one extreme to the other.
The headlines tend to favour the dismal side of things - and there is certainly plenty to be dismal about. The point has often been made here. But there is good news, even if it comes from foreign sources by writers whose own home conditions are worse than our own. For, without any cavil, we have all gone downhill. Here is an ecstatic view from a writer in the current Field. Start with the Lower Bann, where the fish (salmon, of course), were there "in laughable numbers" for our man in July of last year. Mind you, he caught only one, but the river was "heaving with fish". One of the beats alone grassed (nice term) 2,235 salmon in 1996. In 1997 it was down to 1,083, but then masses of them went on up in the very high water, to be taken in higher beats. A big limit of eight fish per rod per day was introduced. (For fish read salmon, of course).
Not only have Irish anglers problems with salmon farms, as in Scotland, but there is extensive (legal) netting: 49,963 Foyle salmon in 1997. "Yet still Irish salmon rivers flow with fish," writes Jonathan Young, the Field's man. A few other garlands thrown to Irish rivers and then he's on to Peter Mantle in Delphi (so named, we are told, by Byron) and his ranching, i.e. growing and releasing smolts. Off they go out into the Atlantic and at first 1 per cent came back. In 1997 he released 60,000 smolts and the rods caught over 900 of them returning as grilse in 1998. All the reared salmon (identified by a clipped fin) are killed. Anglers are encouraged to return all the wild, wild fish. Quite a story. No doubt we'll be back to the black-spots in the fish world again, but it's good to see how much we have still.
Y