Salmon of Knowledge

Increase in Salmon on the Dingle Peninsula?

Atlantic Salmon, River Maine, 2016

What is it that fascinates Anglers about this majestic fish? In my own experience my whole life was centred around Salmon from a child, until the present day. Down through generations people have poached, sold, ate, fished and killed these fish in the thousands. I remember as a young fella talking to old fellas and Salmon basically fed them pints, there whole lives. Things have changed in the last twenty years, not only with Salmon but with all our species in Ireland. More often now you can see Anglers practising C&R, although I am first to admit that for me, I try and catch my quota and leave it at that. In the past angling for Salmon was all about catching the fish and either selling it or eating it. It was a kind of stamp of authority on your masculinity for me as a young man growing up. Things have changed though and now its frowned on to be selling fish. More the ever, conservation is being looked at as a good thing, rather then a bad thing. If you look every year, at the rivers closed and open, throughout our country, we can see so many closed rivers. For a long time I was defiantly a supporter of keeping rivers open to anglers but I did some research on Salmonid studies completed by the IFI, in my local rivers back in west Kerry. 

Atlantic Salmon, River Laune, 2017

Basically an area of river is studied and the young Salmon Parr are counted within that area. I am not an expert on the amount or area but I think its aproxmeticly 5 Parr to 5 Min's study of the habitat. Again I could be wrong on that but the reports are all up on line for the experts to read. The Emalgh river was studied in the last few years and since the closing of angling on the river then amount of Parr counted has risen quite considerably. The Emalgh river might be better known as the Inch river and can be seen on the back road from camp to inch. The same goes for all the spate rivers back in West Kerry and actually the Annascual was opened back up for Angling recently because it was studied and estimated to be of a healthy standard. The biggest problem these fantastic small spate rivers in west Kerry have is poaching. A better management plan and maybe an overall club put in place could only benefit these rivers which really are a huge commodity to there local areas.