Among the most disgruntled or disappointed people, in a minor sort of way - and they get little sympathy from others outside their obsession - are certain trout and salmon fishers. Rod and line men, up and down to the West tramping banks of rivers and lakes, which they have known since they first cast a fly, and, at the end of the season, not a salmon among them. A few modest trout, which almost makes the pain worse. And there they have been all summer, doggedly getting into their cars at unearthly hours, to travel maybe 180 miles for a few days' respite from Dublin, and the hope of a few fine salmon, one or two to have smoked for Christmas.
For consolation you ring Paul Bourke of the Central Fisheries Board. You are certain of one thing: the Moy, at least, will have given salmon galore. He hasn't very consoling news. The famous Ridge Pool, which has been known to reward anglers with 50 fish a day at the height of the season, delivered, in the month of September, just four fish. Four for the whole month. But it's not bad news all over the country, he says. The Nore was good and there was fishing on the Suir.
And you'll have read on Saturday's paper the news from Derek Evans that the fisheries people on the western region have a huge development plan on the stocks, have recruited 30 additional staff for river and lake development are backed by the Office of Public works, the whole with financial backing from Europe. We'll see.
The sorry tale of the destruction of life in the Borora or Moynalty river in Meath was set out in a court case, reported in the Meath Chronicle, where Wellman International was fined £100 with £2,509 in costs on foot of the destruction caused following the fire in their factory at Mullagh and the resulting effluent from the firefighting. Even 12 miles down the river and that's in the Blackwater into which the Borora flows - there was a complete fish kill, said C. V. Maloney, solicitor for the prosecution on behalf of the Eastern Fisheries Board. And Marie Fallon, an environmental officer of the same, described it as the biggest fishkill she had ever seen and the biggest ever in the region: salmon, trout, eels.
This wasn't the greatest trout river in the country but it was the price of anyone with a thought for wildlife, and the beauty of water over shingle with flaggers and reeds and an active bird life: kingfishers, dippers, mallard, herons, and in summer flycatchers. Nothing for them now.