NATURE Lough, stock and fish in a barrel

BRIGHT FUTURE?Stocks of trout are increasing in Lough Mask, boding well for the future of angling tourism.

Lough, stock and fish in a barrel


Country sights and sounds
John Shelley

When the telephone rang and woke me from my Sunday afternoon siesta the last thing I was expecting was an invitation to join in a soccer game. The lads were a man short; would I care to make up the numbers?
I looked out through the window to see fleecy clouds drifting slowly across a bright sky, travelling east on a westerly breeze. I thought of Carra, of Otter Point and the easy drift over deep water to the Twin Islands, where trout would be feeding high in the water...
It was no easy decision, but I dug out my boots, found my old football shirt and, if I say so myself, stood up to the game pretty well, even giving a good account of myself among a rabble less than half my age. Well, that’s how I saw it anyway.
When I spoke to James later that evening conflicting accounts had already reached his ears. I described one mazy dribble which culminated in a terrific shot that smashed off the crossbar.
‘I know. I heard. Nearly an own goal.’
I had left that bit out. ‘A minor detail. Anyway, if we dwelt only on our errors we should be in a bad way altogether. It was a good workout. I ran right to the end.’
‘I heard that, too. Like a carthorse in a field full of colts. And you smell like carrion.’
Now, some hours and a good shower later, I am reminded why my boots were buried in the bottom of the cupboard. Wrenched knees and knocked ankles can be run off in the heat of a game, but they don’t go away. Quite evidently, muscles gained by rowing can be ruined by running. I should retire now – well, once this World Cup is over I can kick it out of my system and concentrate properly on fishing.
Last month was not the Glorious May we had envisioned, so we look now to the rest of June to fill the void. Friends fishing Lough Mask have worn themselves out pulling trout from the water, their days dominated by terrific numbers of undersized fish. This is certainly good news and bodes well for the coming years and is also a good indication of the health of the lake. We know these are early days but as word spreads we can expect angling tourism to pick up a good bit.
Even James is catching trout. While I had been galloping up and down the football field he went and pulled two from the river where I had fished and found none, and took great delight in showing them to me. Though both were wild brown trout they were from very different stock. The larger was short, stocky, covered with dark markings and fully three pounds in weight, its head bestowed with the powerful, sharp-toothed jaws of a true predator, while the second was equal in length yet only half the girth. With a golden belly and spots of crimson and blue along sides of gilded bronze it was much more pleasing to the eye. Slender, streamlined and gracefully curved, it might have leaped right from the pages of Jugend.
‘A real trout, as a trout should be.’
‘And there’s more where these came from,’ said James, ‘if you’d only leave down that fly rod and fish properly, with worms, like I showed you.’ He sighed the sigh of the mathematics tutor whose student fails to grasp the elements or intrinsic beauty of trigonometry.
A little later we met a man from Ballymena who had come to pitch his wits against our Mayo trout and had lost. He told tales of Lough Sheelin, of its near demise at the hands of factory farming and poor sewage management in the 1980s and ’90s and the near miraculous recovery that has once more made that famed midland lake one of Europe’s most productive trout waters.
‘So what happened?’ James and I both wanted to know.
‘First of all most of the pollution was stopped, and then the hatcheries went into production,’ our new friend explained over a pint. ‘The lake was stocked to bulk up the trout population and at the same time anglers were encouraged to return their catch to the water. Although anglers still kill some fish most go back alive and consequently there are some very big and very wise old trout that are near impossible to catch.’
I could see James’s eyes misting over and knew what he was thinking; a big bunch of worms would bring one or two of them to the bank.
Sheelin was historically superb, perhaps reaching its peak in the few eutrophic years before it crashed. We wish it a long and hearty recovery. More than that, we hope that lessons have been learned and that we never take the health of our great western lakes for granted. If we do, there might be more of us digging out the football boots.