Taking Stock is a handsome, informative and in some ways disturbing magazine issued under the auspices not only of our own Central Fisheries Board, but also in the name of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and many other bodies on this island and in Britain. Whatever is happening out there in the seas around us, we here, need to take heed of what that title implies - limiting exploitation, improving habitat and stocking.
Improving habitat for example, allows more juvenile fish to grow to adults. That brings in pollution. How many fish are lost by slurry injections into rivers? Every farmer, every person who lives along a river can help here. Young salmon and sea trout live in the river of their birth for one to four years, it is reckoned, before migration to sea as smolts. They are very vulnerable when they emerge from the egg as fry, due to lack of food and cover. They need acquatic insects, larvae and other invertebrates. Habitat damage such as overgrazing (leading to bank erosion maybe), drainage and also of excessive shade all work against the fish population.
Channels become artificially broad and shallow. Pool areas are lost, spawning gravels are compacted and silted. And the basic need is to ensure that there are enough fish spawning to make the future. Catches may have to be reduced. Hence catch-and-release, which does not please everyone. Drainage schemes work against the salmon population because they replace the natural riffle/pool/ glide, sequence, as the magazine well puts it, and the river "meanders with a canal-like drain, with serious effects on all forms of wildlife."
Stabilising banks therefore, is highly important, perhaps with logs or rocks. Stocking is a controversial issue. In stillwater fisheries like reservoirs, with no spawning streams, stocking can create and maintain a trout population. Some river experts, after a disaster, recommended letting the river heal itself. A slow process, as some trout will come up from below the disaster area, others come downstream. One river in Meath has chosen this solution. Slow, but coming on.
While Stocks Last, which covers all salmonids is the name of a video which is free while still available. Paul Young, wellknown TV figure, brings home to you the reality of the man in the waders. This is free from Central Fisheries Board, Glasnevin, Dublin 9: 01 8379206. But basically what the editor of the magazine, our own Martin O'Grady, is saying is: it's up to everyone, not just salmon or salmonid anglers to preserve this marvellous tribe, this almost miraculous creature, especially the salmon, as a mark, even, of our national pride.
Y