A one-day special session on salmon farming, to focus on sea lice and containment, will form part of next year’s North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation (Nasco) conference, following a proposal by NGOs including Salmon Watch Ireland (SWI) at the recent conference in Goose Bay, Canada.
This significant development will help shine a light internationally on Ireland’s appalling record in the siting and management of salmon farms, according to Niall Greene of SWI. It will also highlight Ireland’s failure to take steps for a transition to more sustainable methods of salmon farming including closed containment, he said.
Licence hassle
Henry Cowper emails an intriguing story relating to the Sneem River in Co Kerry. There is a small fishing club on the river which sells day permits to passing anglers who tend to stay longer than expected, which is good for the village.
Last year the state licence distributor in the village, which also runs the tourist office and shop, stopped giving out licences. As secretary of the club, Cowper rang the Macroom office of Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) last week and independently suggested a suitable replacement.
“I was told that new distributors must pay up for the licences. The example I was quoted was that a book of €100 licences [10 per book] required €1,000 up front. Who is going to do that?
“I did not follow up on a one-day or three-week licence, but must presume the same principle applies. To me this is ridiculous. Not very helpful to the visiting angler or the local economy. The powers-that-be should be falling over themselves to facilitate the casual angler,” he said.
Fish kill
IFI and Limerick and Tipperary County Council are currently investigating a major fish kill which occurred on the Drumcramoge River, last Monday.
Over 4,300 fish mortalities have been estimated so far on a prime nursery area between Ballycahill Bridge and Knocklong. The majority of mortalities were juvenile trout including over 100 adult trout broodstock. Other species were salmon, crayfish, stickleback, minnow and stone loach.
The pollution has been attributed to an agricultural effluent and the source is unconfirmed at this time.
Amanda Mooney of IFI said: “This is a heavy blow to the river, especially with most of this year’s juveniles wiped out in a prime nursery area.”
Fishing is up
Fishing picked up a little on the Ballynahinch Fishery last week with three fish off the Owenmore River. Patrick O’Flaherty started the ball rolling with a fine 9lb fish near the falls, then Cyril Biggins followed with an 11lb beauty off Snabeg and Michael Von Murick closed the week with a 5lb fish, also on Snabeg. Contact Ballynahinch Castle Hotel on 095-31006 or info@ballynahinch-castle.com.
The Drowes enjoyed a very good week with about 70 salmon registered, the majority of which were grilse. Wednesday was the top day with at least 18 caught. See drowessalmonfishery.comor phone 071-9841055 (8am to 12 noon) for bookings.
On Melvin, the mayfly hatch has started in decent numbers with good catches of sonaghan reported. The best fishing centred on Kinlough and Lareen Bay at the bottom end of the lough.
The Garrison and Melvin Anglers’ second leg of the Tony O’Brien Cup on Sunday was won by Niall Crummy and Darryl Grimason with six trout. There were also a number of grilse caught; one angler hooked four and lost all of them!
The Inniscarra Reservoir presented wet and windy weather for last weekend’s three-day festival but continued to fish well, particularly the Farmyard section returning nets of skimmers and a close result, with just 1kg between the top four.
Results: 1, K Johnson, 35.350kg; 2, P McCaul, 35.150kg; 3, D Bacon, 34.350kg; 4, P Mills, 34.300kg.
The event concludes this year’s early festival season on Inniscarra until August. For a list of festivals and open matches visit ncffi.ie/eventscalendar.
angling@irishtimes.com
