By Stephen Smyth
Three generations fishing for wild Bann salmon
The author with one of the fine fish caught and released that day.
W
hen my late father Russell introduced me to salmon fishing almost sixty years ago, it was quite a different sport. The worm was deadly, a bunch of three big blackheads below a pinch of split shot. Spinning was popular with the Stukii, a half scaled copper and silver spoon, being the most favoured, along with Tobys, blue and silver Devon Minnows and No. 2 Mepps. Fly fishing was occasionally practised when conditions were right, with sinking lines and heavy, three or four piece, split cane rods, and 32
shrimping was hardly seen at all. But the great thing was, back then, there were fantastic numbers of wild salmon in all our local rivers, and almost everybody caught a few. Fishermen also were different in those days, everything caught was one for the table, nothing was wasted or just destroyed, and everything was relaxed, Fishing was like a day out. This old fashioned type of sustainable fishing lasted for decades, recreational angling did not affect the salmon numbers, if anything the salmon count increased
Autumn 2020 Irish Country Sports and Country Life
and there was plenty of fish for everyone. My father Russell truly loved fishing, but he loved especially all our family going with him, including my mother, and she also caught them. An ideal day would be three or four fish of any type caught, and everybody getting one each. If you caught one, dad would then organise it that you relaxed and didn’t fish again until everyone else had been successful. He encouraged everybody to go fishing with him, friends and their children too, and he was happy not
