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Salmon of a lifetime
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By:
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Rivers2walk
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Mood:
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- Salmon & Trout
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Date:
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Oct 24, 2009
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Music:
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None
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The title of this true episode is the salmon of a lifetime but before I describe it some background information might be useful.Fishing has to be the most unfair sport of all for in almost every other sport the sportsman has to serve a long apprenticeship before he can hope to try for the greatest prize of all. In angling the chance of the ultimate prize can come right at the very beginning of a career when the fisherman is far too inexperienced to cope with what faces him. Almost always the ultimate prize that every fisherman dreams of is a huge fish, a dream it must be said that is all too rarely fulfilled for the simple reason that huge fish are, by their nature, rare. Here in Ireland we have only one species of salmon, the Atlantic salmon. Compared to king salmon and some other breeds Atlantic salmon are in general relatively small and due to cyclical changes big fish have become rarer over the last fifty years or so. These days a nice salmon would weigh 10lbs, a good fish 15lbs and for most anglers a 20lb salmon would be the fish of a lifetime, in fact few Irish anglers will ever catch a salmon of this weight. A fish of 30lbs or slightly more might turn up once in five years and when they do they make national news. Some, usually rivers are noted for producing large salmon but in theory wherever salmon run and regardless of the size of the river a very big salmon could turn up at anytime. There are little mountain streams where the run of salmon is made up entirely of grilse, fish of 3lb to 5lb but perhaps once in ten or fifteen years a salmon of 20lbs might turn up..a fish who for some unknown reason had decided to stay feeding at sea for a few extra years...Now to my story. I have been very lucky in my angling life with eight small rivers and streams all of which have runs of salmon and seatrout withing twenty miles of where I live. When I was young I was surrounded by relatives and neighbors who all fished for trout and salmon and it must be said that some of these people were none too particular by which method they extracted the fish from the rivers. One of these guys was a man of seventy one who, while still sprightly, was not the man he had been some years previously and his strength had largely deserted him. However he loved to walk along the riverbank near our home and when the opportunity presented itself he was still able to take a salmon from the river. This old fellow was the proverbial lovable rogue and his favorite fishing method was as follows. He cut a straight hazel rod about seven feet long and to one end he attached a large gaff hook. When he spotted a salmon he lay on the bank and placing the hook in position under the salmons head he drove the gaff in and lifted the fish from the water. This of course was a very brutal way of taking any kind of fish and I must hasten to add that it has been many decades since this was employed in even the wildest parts of Ireland. One evening when I was about thirteen years old I met our old friend coming home from the river. Not only was he was in a state of extreme agitation but he was soaking wet from head to toe. He blurted out his story and soon I was as excited as he was. He had been walking along the riverbank as usual and looking into a favored pool he spotted a huge salmon like shape. There had been rain a few days previously and while the river had fallen it was still slightly colored and he couldn't really tell for sure if the shape he was looking at was a salmon or not. He decided to take a chance and wading into the water he placed his hook under where he thought the head should be and pulled the hazel rod upwards driving the home. The river exploded as a huge salmon felt the pain of the steel in its flesh and the old man could only hold his ground for a few seconds before he was pulled off balance and he was still holding onto his hazel rod when the salmon turned and snapped it in two escaping with gaff in it's side and trailing four feet of hazel. Naturally I was beside myself with excitement and this increased further when my old friend said that together we would bring about the big fishes downfall the next morning. I had to keep this to myself as my father would have tanned my hide if he thought I was involved in a business such as this. As it turned out it was to be a very painful experience and I have a scar to this very day to prove it. We were at the river bright and early, the morning was calm, crisp and clear.. perfect. The old man needed me,for physically he would be unable to land such a salmon and in any case he was worn out from the day before. This time he was taking no chances and for insurance in case the salmon broke the rod he tied strong twine onto the hook and attached the other end to my wrist. Instructing me on what to do we searched for the salmon. The old man spotted him first. The fish was resting unseen beneath a large overhanging bank but the hazel rod still attached to him gave his position away. After final instructions I waded quietly into the river and slowly made my way towards where the salmon was lying. The only part of the fish that I could see was his tail and about a foot of his body, but his tail stunned me, a huge wide grey tail which seem so much bigger than the tails of those salmon of eight and ten pounds my father often caught. I got the hook into position and holding my breath I drew the hazel rod upwards with all the strength I could muster. For a second nothing happened, all was solid..then just as the day before the big fish came out of the water in a great shower of spray and churned up the water as I struggled to hold him with the hazel rod. The old man was jumping up and down on the bank and shouting but I couldn't hear what he was saying...even if I could it would have made no difference. The hazel rod broke and now I was attached to the fish with the twine which was wrapped round my wrist. The river was small, twenty feet wide. The great salmon made up his mind to head upstream and soon unable to stop him and with the twine starting to cut into my wrist I was stumbling after him. I managed to follow the salmon for about ten yards before I stumbled over some stones and while I fell the fish kept going until the twine snapped. My last memory of that salmon of a lifetime is the sound of him crashing through the shallow stream at the head of the pool and splashing into the next pool and vanishing forever. My wrist was cut and bleeding badly and I still bear the scar of the encounter with that salmon to this day. The old man cried..not for my pain but for losing the greatest salmon of all our lives. Looking back through all those years and with several thousand salmon I have caught since then I'd say that fish was between thirty and forty pounds..in a river where the average is usually around 6lbs. After the salmon had spawned that year a huge spent cockfish was found dead at the side of the river..he had two wounds on his body. A great salmon who had beaten the odds twice survived and spawned successfully....what better way to end this story.
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